Flames

Arawn laughed, pulling back from her blushing face. She was truly the most innocent woman he’d ever pursued. It would make his usual methods go a bit easier in some ways. Seduction was an effective tactic even if she was hesitant to fall into it completely.
But that didn’t matter, he liked a chase, and in his experience, the harder the chase the longer lasting the bond was. Fedelm had been nervous and resistant to the call of desire too. It had taken time, a bit of affection, and a few heated glances before she had even mustered up the courage to kiss him properly.
Now, there was little he couldn’t ask her for or that she would not offer him if she thought it would make him happy.
“As you wish,” Arawn helped her sit up and sat beside her. “I am not suggesting that you develop a cult following in the way of false belief. Start small.”
He chuckled, “Go the route of your friend if you’d like.”
Sirona frowned and looked up at him, “Druid?”
Arawn nodded grinning, “Go out and be among the people. Show your abilities and build a name for yourself. I wouldn’t suggest healing the lame as that won’t get you the kind of power you’re looking for, but it is a start.”
Druid benefitted in some way from his actions, but it was not the same as the way Arawn benefitted. Druid was not the man’s real name, nor did people hold in their minds his image or what they believed his image was. They pictured his strange clothes and the deep hood he wore.
Aside from that, Druid’s patron god was powerful enough to cloth Druid in their protection and give him divine sight. However that God accumulated power was unknown to Arawn, but he knew that Druid benefitted from it. He was more akin to the Herald of Anu in some ways.
His lips twitched at the thought. Anu had made sure that every member of the temple could not accumulate power for themselves by making them take titles, forsaking their name in the service of her cult. It made sure that Anu benefitted the most from her followers’ deeds.
It was as clever, cunning, and controlling as he knew Anu to be.
Sirona hummed, “What did you do to make yourself a god to the people of Berth?”
He smiled, remembering his younger days almost fondly. He’d been young, hopeful, and far more attached to the mortals than he was now. There had been a time when he and Druid may have gotten along and agreed about the treatment of humans, but that had been long before Druid was alive. There hadn’t been a cult of Arawn then.
“When you get your first true believer, I’ll tell you how the cult of Arawn began.”
Sirona’s eyes widened in shock. Was it some great secret? Whatever it was, she was sure that he had never told anyone else about it. It warmed her to think he would share something that seemed so personal with her.
Sirona nodded as he got to his feet and offered her his hands, “We should get going. We’ll walk the rest of the way.”
“Where are we going?” Sirona asked, taking his hand.
He pulled her up and linked their arms as if he was escorting her through town, “The town doesn’t have a name, but I believe it will be a good place to start building a reputation for yourself.”
Sirona nodded, walking with him and smiling. She had seen young women being escorted around town by their paramours, young wives with their husbands, and so on, but she had never had the chance to be escorted by anyone but her father. Her stomach was fluttering and her heart was light as they walked and chatted about the wildlife of Berth.
He pointed things out and explained them to her in a very different way than Druid did. The contrast between them was startling sometimes.
“How long have you known Druid?” Sirona asked.
“I met him… not long after his master died, I suppose.” Arawn shrugged, “He has not changed much in all these years.”
“Is that a good thing?”
Arawn chuckled, “If you consider the constancy of a mountain a good thing, yes. I like to think nothing with a finite lifespan should be so unchanging.”
Sirona frowned, “Does that mean you have changed a lot?”
Arawn considered correcting her. He was a god. He didn’t have a finite lifespan. He could live eons in this vessel and never know the difference, but he pushed the thought aside.
“I have changed a great deal.”
Her eyes sparkled, “I don’t just mean your clothes.”
He chuckled, “No. I have changed a great deal more than my clothes. I would venture to say I have become a new person several times over.”
Sirona nodded, “What were you like before?”
His lips twitched, “I think… my younger self was a great deal like Druid… Perhaps under different circumstances, he is something like the man I could have become.”
She blinked, “What happened to change you so much?”
Arawn chuckled, “I decided it was for the best.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. Devoting all of his energy and his time to the management of humans and their well-being had been exhausting. It had required too much of him. The path he had chosen and the way he had arrived there was for the betterment of the southern continent.
He could not imagine choosing a different path now, though he felt a strange yearning for some aspects of it while in Sirona’s presence.
Slowly, they made their way through the forest and found a road leading towards what looked like a small town. Then, someone screamed.
“No, please! It’s all we have!”
Sirona went still and Arawn tightened his grip on her as they grew closer and the sounds of a struggle grew louder. People were running and screaming. Men in dark clothing rode through on horses, swinging their swords and raiding homes. A woman was dragged by her hair out of her home and thrown to the ground. Children cowered before being swept up and carried off screaming for their parents.
Sirona’s heart lurched, “W-We have to help them.”
“You aren’t healed enough to do—”
The roar of a quickly building fire filled the air as they rode off. People were screaming and begging. Smoke billowed up in a thick black cloud and Sirona couldn’t breathe.
She smelled burning flesh and at the back of her mind, she heard the Herald of Anu screaming about a young woman’s sins against Anu as she screamed and choked on the smoke and the fire devoured her body.
Arawn felt power ebbing and rushing up and looked at Sirona as she vanished from his side and reappeared floating in the middle of the burning town. People turned to stare at her in shock as she lifted a hand and sent a wave of light over a bunch of still bodies that began to choke and breathe.
With another wave of her hand, the smoke swirled and vanished in the air. The fire rushed up through the air to join it, fizzling out above the town, leaving only a few burnt-out remains and singed buildings that just stopped sizzling.
When the fire vanished, she turned in the direction that the bandits had gone. Arawn gasped at the brilliant glow in her eyes that sense a shiver of fear down his spine.
He thought of a very old deity, one he had only encountered once in his life and never saw again. That deity had not spoken, nor seemed threatened by him. He had barely caught a glimpse of the figure before it vanished, but he remembered the bright glowing eyes and the fear they inspired.
The glow fizzled out before she stumbled. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed in the center of the town.
“By Arawn’s will, we’re saved.”
“Who is that young woman?”
Arawn crossed the distance to her and kneeled, trying to get a sense of her power. That depth contained more power than he thought. She hadn’t exhausted all of her power, just the bit that she’d taken from the earth while they were in the forest it seemed.
He looked over at the people who had been laying on the ground. They were sitting up, drawing their hands over their bloodied shirts in shock.
“Excuse me,” a woman said as Arawn, lifted Sirona into his arms. “If you need a place to stay for a time, you can use the house that way. It is the least I can do for what your companion has done for us.”
Arawn looked at the house. It wasn’t a palace, but he’d planned on taking them to a town as desperate as this, so he couldn’t complain that things were going more smoothly than he first anticipated.
“Thank you.”