Page 5 of The Goddess is Awakened
Azren? My parents had never mentioned an Azren to me in my entire life, and they talked about the gods a lot. My dad gave me history lessons all the time. I knew damned well gods chose their names as I chose mine, but my dad never mentioned this one. Azren cleared their throat and gave Headmaster Krauss a pointed look. She looked wholly annoyed.
“He would like you to know his pronouns are they/them.”
Azren just rolled their eyes. Matilda poked me and leaned in.
“Did she seriously just misgender a primordial god?”
“Pretty sure she did. Dad would turn her into a roach.”
“The staff will now be bringing out your desserts. There is a spell woven into each dessert that will tell you which dorm you’ll be staying in and who your roommate will be. There will be no changing roommates once the dessert has spoken, but I am making one change. If you are a twin or multiple, I will be manually changing your dorm room so that you are rooming with someone you don’t know. This will allow all our students to get to know each other.”
I sat there stunned, and Matilda gasped like she had been slapped. We weren’t the only twins in the room. The dining hall was full of every student at this academy. I could see several twins and triplets looking around, wondering if their dorm would get changed, and freshmen worried about new assignments.
Headmaster Krauss wasn’t a twin. She didn’t know the bond we had. It was beyond supernatural. She couldn’t even get in another word because the dining hall was pissed. It wasn’t just the twins and multiples. A few people didn’t like their roommates and were wondering if they’d get to switch. Some were worried about losing theirs.
This was all about sticking it to me. Divide and conquer. Separate me from my twin, and I didn’t have backup. She still thought I was a witch, and if there weren’t a Hellhound around, I’d be easy to beat.
I could tell she didn’t bring this up at the faculty meeting. Gabriel would have warned us and spoken against it. The rest of the staff looked horrified, but it was Azren who got up. They whispered in her ear for a minute, and I saw Headmaster Krauss visibly pale before she announced she would be walking back that policy.
I wondered what Azren said to her. I didn’t know what they were the god of, but I liked them already.
azren
Ah, Beatrix. I knew secrets about her plenty of people here didn’t. This whole magical dessert thing? Totally her. None of the students knew what was coming. They happily ate their pastry and expected something to be at the bottom of the dish. A few laughed when they all erupted into belches that turned into text announcing their dorms and roommates, and a few, of course, were mortified.
Making a few uppity rich kids embarrassed by burping in front of their classmates wassoBeatrix.
My mark and her twin laughed, of course. George Bell looked just like her mother. There was a tiny bit of her father in her. George and Matilda were fraternal, but there was so much of their mom in them they might as well be identical. The only reason they weren’t was that George had the same silver eyes every god had, and her twin had blonde highlights in her hair.
I knewofthem, but I’d never met them. The only offspring from the Bell brood I’d met was Michael, right after he was born. He wasn’t that hard to pick out. Michael was sitting at the head of his table like a king with his wings out.
George and her twin were alternating between giving me and that awful woman who was running this school the stink eye. I got it. Lindsay Krauss wasterrible.I probably should have texted or called Reyson and told him ahead of time I’d be teaching history here. Time moved differently in my realm, and I was a forgetful creature on a good day. Time just got away from me.
Icouldhave told Gabriel at the faculty meeting, but that terrible Krauss woman didn’t feel the need to tell me about it. She was prepared to kiss my ass just for being a god right up until she met me and saw the dress I was wearing. I had plenty of trousers, but I didn’t dress for the comfort of other people and didn’t intend on wearing them for however long I ended up teaching here.
Lindsay Krauss was a flea compared to the cosmos, but she could barely contain her disdain and conveniently neglected to mention the faculty meeting. Fuck, the only reason I found out about orientation was my welcome paperwork, and she couldn’t avoid giving that to me.
It would have been nice to give a member of the Bell family a heads up I’d be teaching here because their offspring was the entire reason. I promised Ripley and Reyson right after Michael was born that if any of their children ended up gods, I’d use my extensive research on our powers to tutor that child.
Gods were all created with a main power and job, but there were all abilities that we shared. Some of my fellow gods were utterly mediocre. They never questionedwherewe came from or tried to press the boundaries of our shared abilities. The only gods that ever did were Reyson, Loki, Lilith, Freya, and sometimes Odin.
The rest wanted nothing to do with me. Being the sole God of Death meant most gods feared me.
Which brought me to my current teaching stint. I could have taught this young god without correcting all the bad history these young supernaturals had been taught over their lifetimes. I knew Beatrix Halliwell. She had a huge secret that I was pretty confident that I was the only one privy to until recently.
I had a realm full of reapers I created to help me move the essences of the dead to the Aether. I didn’t do it myself so much anymore, but I could sense when a lot of unnatural death was happening. The problem was that since time moved differently in my realm, sometimes I got there too late to stop it.
I got here twenty years too late to do anything about the massacre that happened, but I thought Beatrix found a solution I couldn’t. Every few decades, I’d sense an unusual amount of unnatural death surrounding The Academy of the Profane. Except I’d feel it too late. Everyone who had died was in the Aether, where I couldn’t ask them, and the university had covered it up.
It could have been random, isolated incidents. It could have been another god who knew Beatrix’s secret, but I doubted it because it was only ever at the academy. I had my reapers on high alert for any deaths at this academy. They were supposed to ask any ghosts they reaped before they took them to the Aether how they died.
I had that feeling in my gut again, and none of my reapers had reported anything unusual. Which meant I was hopefully here to catch it this time.
I was good friends with Reyson and Loki. I knew they would have both taught George control. Her dad also told me about her necklace. George had been suppressing who she was for eighteen years.
I could only hope it didn’t get explosive when the necklace came off. I didn’t want all the death I was here to stop to come from one of my good friend’s daughters.
george
