Chapter 196: Goddess Nut

Kalon stood at the edge of the high island and took in the place properly.

It did not look like a place where a goddess would live. It was just a broad island made of pale sky-stone with a few weather-worn structures, a garden patch held in place by old earthwork, and open blue sky in every direction.

Wind blew stronger up here than it did on Seraphina’s level. The air was thin enough that an ordinary person would have struggled with it.

Near a low table set out in the open, a woman was eating lunch by herself.

She was small. Much smaller than Seraphina. Her build was compact, almost delicate through the shoulders and waist, with light brown skin and short dark hair cut unevenly around her face.

Her clothes were practical rather than royal: a loose wrap top, fitted trousers, and bare feet hooked under the edge of her seat.

What did not match the rest of her were the wings. They were enormous, far too large for her frame, pure white with dull gold near the roots. Even folded, they rose well above her head and trailed out behind the chair.

There was nothing divine about the way she ate. She had a bowl in one hand and a piece of flatbread in the other, chewing with her cheeks full, completely absorbed in her meal.

Kalon stepped out into the open.

The woman’s eyes lifted at the movement. For half a second she only stared, confused by the sight of a stranger with no wings.

Then her whole face changed.

"You—!"

She shoved the bowl away and shot upright so fast the chair scraped back across the stone.

"Pervert!"

Kalon blinked. "What? I’m not—"

She did not wait.

Her wings beat once, hard enough to throw dust across the table, and she launched straight up into the thinner sky. For someone so small, the lift was immediate and violent. In seconds she was already above the islands surface, climbing toward platforms even higher than this one.

Kalon watched her go.

That was Goddess Nut. Not really any Goddess at all. Just a short Delphinium woman with oversized wings and a temper, living alone at an altitude nobody else could reach.

He exhaled once and waited.

There was no point chasing her through open air. Wings gave her the advantage there. What she did not have was the system.

He tracked the direction of her flight, locked onto the higher island she was heading for, and transferred.

[Short-range travel complete.]

Kalon appeared on stone again.

This island was narrower than the last, with broken pillars and less open ground. Wind screamed across it without interruption.

Before he could locate the woman, movement closed in from all sides.

Ten giant birds surrounded him.

They were not ordinary wildlife. Each one stood taller than a man at the shoulder, with hard black beaks, layered grey-white feathers, and claws that dug chips out of the sky-stone where they landed.

Their eyes were sharp and focused. Several had already lowered their bodies into a striking posture. One on his left snapped its beak hard enough for the sound to crack through the wind.

Kalon turned slowly and counted them again.

Ten.

The small woman stood farther up the slope behind the birds, chest rising fast, one hand still half-raised from whatever command she had given them.

Her huge wings were half-open now, not for flight this time but rather to make herself look larger than she was. A trick used by many different kinds of birds.

"You followed me," she shouted over the wind.

"You ran," Kalon said.

"Because you’re a pervert!"

"I’m not a pervert."

"Then why were you watching me eat lunch like a creep?"

"I came here looking for Goddess Nut."

That made her flinch.

The nearest bird hissed. Another scraped one claw across the stone, leaving a pale groove. None of them attacked yet, but the circle was tight enough that a single wrong step would change that.

The woman stared at Kalon harder, suspicion written cleanly across her face.

"There is no Goddess Nut," she said. "Not anymore. People down below just needed a name to worship so they wouldn’t panic."

"And that name was yours."

Her mouth tightened.

"I made the islands a long time ago. That doesn’t make me a goddess. It makes me a regular talented human being." She pointed at him. "Which still doesn’t explain how a wingless foreigner got up here."

Kalon kept his hands visible.

"I can travel in ways your people can’t."

"That’s not an answer. Give me an answer!"

"That’s the best answer you’re going to get, unforutunately, because it’s the true one."

One of the birds on his right edged closer. The woman clicked her tongue, and it stopped, but its feathers remained raised. The whole ring of them was waiting for her word.

She studied Kalon’s appearance again, then his clothes, then the fact that he was standing comfortably in air this thin without struggle.

"You’re not from the lower courts," she said.

"No."

"Not from any island I know."

"No."

"And you still came all the way up here."

"Yes."

The wind pushed hard between them. Her oversized wings shifted with it. For the first time since she had shouted at him, a little of the blind panic left her expression and was replaced by calculation.

"If you came for worship, leave," she said. "If you came for favours, also leave. If you came because the islands are collapsing and you think I can fix all of it by snapping my fingers, you’re going to be disappointed."

Kalon met her eyes.

"I came because Sky-Queen Seraphina still believes Goddess Nut exists. And because the islands below this one are failing."

The woman’s face stiffened at Seraphina’s name.

Around Kalon, the ten giant birds held their line, claws set, beaks ready, waiting to see whether their master would tell them to tear the foreigner apart or let him speak another word.