Chapter Thirty-Eight

When Cierra woke up the next day, she immediately hopped online to get an idea as to how the other's training had gone, and who their new 'masters' were. Her skin crawled at the word. She had considered suggesting the term trainer or coach, she was even okay with boss. Anything was better than 'master.'

But when she thought about it, she tried to think of the time period this person must be coming from. Perhaps 'master' didn't carry the same negative connotation for him as it did her.

Opening her messenger, she saw Nora had already started what Cierra was thinking of doing: creating a group message.

'Who did you guys get paired up with?' Nora had asked, around 430am.

No one else had responded or read her message yet, except Cierra.

'I got a god, I think, named Fer Benn. Gonna do research later today. You?'

There was no response.

Sighing, Cierra opened a new tab, resigning herself to waiting. As curious as she was about the others, she was more interested in Fer Benn and who he might be.

What else had he called himself? She wracked her brain trying to remember. He had mentioned being a chief of somewhere, druids, horns…

Immediately, she found his wiki page. Scanning through, she found he was from Ireland, which matched well with his accent. What caught Cierra's attention was the fact that Fer Benn, or Dagda as he seemed to be more commonly called, was comparable in some ways to Odin, a god king.

Did that mean she was being trained by a supremely powerful being? If so, why was he simply training her? Why wasn't he out fighting the nightmares himself?

Taking a look at his powers, Cierra blushed. Apparently, the club he carried around with him was once upon a time seen as phallic in nature, and he was considered one of the male gods of fertility. On the other hand, he was also associated with strength, wisdom and whatever druidism was.

From what she could recall, druids were typically associated with animals and tended to have some sort of special ability to commune with them.

He also seemed to have some magic ability and control over time.

Was this why Goldie had sent her to him? Because she had Cid and the ability to heal things within a certain period or time? Had Goldie suspected that she had been playing with time and that's why she sent her to Fer Benn?

Cierra shook her head, trying to shake the questions out. It's not like she could ask Goldie now anyway. From now on she was stuck training with the Irish god.

She was about to start searching for what a 'Leshy' was when her messenger pinged.

It was Nora.

'I got Murugan, a child-god of war and strategy. Did you get sent to…a fertility god?'

Cierra could have died right then and there.

'No!' She hit send before explaining anything else, in case someone got the wrong idea.

'He's an old man, controls time, has a castle. Nothing fertility based about him, I think the legend might have gotten it wrong.' Cierra wrote, hoping to save herself from the embarrassment of being trained by a passible fertility god.

In an unprecedented act of protection, Nora wrote, 'Remember, all men have the same weak point.'

"Cid," Cierra looked over at the cat, "Can you please kill me now?"

Cid blinked slowly before jumping in her lap laying down.

"Guess not."

She looked back to the computer, so far Lonnie and Hans were nowhere to be seen.

'What's Murugan like? Is he friendly?'

Already in another tab Cierra was looking for information. If Wikipedia was to be believed, Murugan was ancient and could be seen in Hindu mythology dating as far back as the Bronze Age.

Had everyone been sent to incredibly powerful gods to learn from? Again, Cierra couldn't help but wonder why these gods couldn't take care of the dream realms themselves. There must be a reason they didn't know of as to why they had been chosen to fight the nightmares instead.

Ignoring Nora's vague, 'He was…informative,' Cierra decided to voice her questions in the group chat. There was no way no one else was wondering the same thing.

'Question: Why are we training with seemingly powerful gods to fight nightmares if the gods could simply do it themselves?'

'Wouldn't that mean they can't do it themselves?' Nora answered.

'But why not? They're powerful, Fer Benn literally stopped rain last night and created a castle. How are we, untrained teenagers, the answer to the nightmares?' Cierra retorted.

There had to be something more to this.

Nora left the message on read.

Cierra decided to look up what 'Leshy' was while waiting to hear from the boys.

She was surprised to find that Leshy wasn't a god, but more like a folktale monster in some ways. A shapeshifter, it was known to be able to take on any form and occasionally drink a bucket of vodka at a local bar before heading back to its forest home.

Passively Cierra wondered what exactly Hans could learn from a simple shapeshifter.

She didn't have to wait long, because soon Hans had caught up on the conversation.

'Sry, slept in. You 2 got gods? My guy was a leshy, some sorta woodsy shapeshifter type.'

'Where's Lon?' He followed up.

'Probably sleeping.' Nora replied, 'I can't remember us ever receiving a message from him before the afternoon.'

What was it that Goldie had said to Lonnie?, Cierra tried to remember, Coyote?

Looking up 'Coyote mythology,' she found link after link referring to the Coyote from indigenous people's myths and legends.

In some legends he was a clever opponent, creative in his solutions to his problems. In many ways, Cierra could understand why Goldie would send Lonnie to someone known for their tricks and creativity. His skill to disrupt people and make them argue could probably be well-cultivated with someone like the Coyote.

Cierra did wonder how they would talk though.