35. Children

Levana strolled through a temple that the humans had dedicated to her.

This temple was one of the smaller ones, it used to be a church to the Biblical God but had been repurposed by the local believers. Now draped around were curtains with what looked like imitations of Levana's ever-glowing purple eyes.

It was as if her believers wanted their fellow believers to know that Levana, their chief Goddess, was always watching them.

Levana frowned a little but didn't say anything to the panicking priest that was giving her a tour. She liked the results that her symbol of being all-seeing had brought her religion. Her believers were always trying their best to follow the three rules that she had given them.

Be honest if you expect to be trusted.

Be kind if you want to be treated kindly.

Be free and keep an open mind about the actions of others.

Her three rules were a little tricky to keep but worked well in practice. At least from what she has seen and from what her children had reported.

One could be honest but not kind. Telling another that their clothes suck is an example of this.

One could be kind but not respect the free will of others. Doing things for the greater good was an example of this.

As she thought, it was tricky keeping these sticking to these three rules. Thankfully, Levana only religiously followed one rule and that was being honest.

She was a jerk half the time and had shackled the minds of several immortals on certain occasions. Luckily. all her mind-controlled victims were dead so no one could tell on her.

" A-and this right here is the toilet!" Walking up to the priest, Levana patted his back as gently as she could. Startled, the priest nearly fell. However, Levana reacted quickly. Gently she caught the man by his arm and made sure that he was stable on his feet.

" I-I am sorry my goddess! I didn't mean to-" The man tried to plead for his life. However, Levana cut him off before he could finish.

" It's alright. Thank you for the tour, you may return to your quarters." Levana tried to speak gently. Unfortunately, her voice echoed because of her raw power scaring the poor priest causing him to faint.

Suppressing a sigh, she could for the priestess standing a distance behind her, watching her from afar. Levana spoke louder, calling for the priestess.

" Girl! Come here and take your colleague back to his quarters." Her dissonant voice rang across the temple. Her voice reached frequencies far too high for a human to comfortably listen to causing the priestess to flinch but eventually, she made her way over and collected her fellow believer.

Once the duo were fully out of sight, Levana let out the sigh she had been holding in. The deep sigh caused the ground to vibrate and the walls to shake prompting Levana to frown again.

It didn't use to be like this. However, after seeing those beings beyond reality, her powers started to grow in strength on their own. It made controlling her strength, her powers and abilities extremely difficult, a fact that made Levana's frown deepen.

Her eyes had once enabled her to watch bullets slowly fly through the air giving her ample time to make decisions. Now, her ability was just ridiculous. Her perceived time practically stops.

Levana had once spent an entire year in her stopped time calculating trajectories and brainstorming ideas while fighting a particularly tricky god. This god was the monkey king, the Great Sage and Heaven's equal, Sun Wu Kong. In the end, she had to flee and left the fight at a draw as neither of them couldn't one up the other.

She had been rather irritated back then, that the monkey hadn't used his full strength. However, now, it didn't really matter to her.

Finding herself with nothing to do, once again. Levana decided to take a moment to think and sat on the ground. A moment later, she got up and teleported into the throne room of her main temple in Alaska.

Alaska had been completely scorched during the civil war by Apollo. So, Levana's giant temple sat right in the centre of Alaska in the midst of scorched land. It was a rather simple structure having no more than two floors.

Though it should only be as big as a regular house. Levana had decided to completely disregard physics while building it and had expanded what should have been a regular temple to 10x its normal size. Literally, only giants or shapeshifters could feel comfortable in such a large temple.

Levana teleported directly onto her throne but didn't bother shapeshifting into the right size. She felt like a mouse sitting on the oversized throne. However, her plan for the day wasn't to chill on her throne. It was to chill with her children on her throne.

Telepathically, she called for her children to come to her. All eight appeared before her throne nearly immediately. It was rare that Levana would call even one of them much less all of them at once.

So, each of them felt varying levels of nervousness.

They all kept their heads down as their "Eldest Brother" had instructed them to do.

Though each of the "children" had varying ages they all had bodies of children. Though Levana saw nothing wrong with having child-like subordinates, it didn't help her image of being a battle-mongering, pantheon-raiding tyrant.

Levana called each one by their names...

" Blau," The first god she ascended, the bluebird. A god of innocence, children, birds and the colour blue. Unsurprisingly, he made a tiny squawk in surprise before flapping his big blue feathered wings and flying over to his mother. Levana caught him with her hands and set him down next to her on the throne. There was plenty more space to share.

" Caty," Short for Catherine, was coincidentally a cat before Levana ascended her. A goddess of stealth, assassination and hiding. She is also very shy. The little cat practically pounced on Levana. She was not as shy when with her mother.

" Selena," The first human that Levana had made a goddess. A goddess of childbirth, youth and martial arts. She had silver hair and the body of a ten-year-old. She was actually 15!

" Nash," The second human. He was once an Indian boy who had been orphaned. A god of Justice. He had ascended on his own after the Veil fell. Levana decided to take him into her pantheon. He wasn't as indebted as the rest of the "children" but still appreciated Levana nonetheless. He quickly ran up to her, seeing the trend.

" Sha," It is a shadow. A blob of shadows. It identifies as it and as Sha. A god of shadows. Instead of moving to Levana, it hid in the shadows that Levana's constantly glowing body created.

" Alex," Alex is an invisible girl. A goddess of respect, disrespect and impartiality. Despite her passive invisibility, Levana could see her well enough. She is a VERY shy girl.

" Jake," His real name is Wu Zhe. A son of the Monkey King, entrusted to Levana by the monkey himself. A god of trickery and duels. Jake had a confident smile and strolled over to his mother. Adoptive mother. Levana is a virgin.

" And Croak. I still can't believe you actually took that name..." Croak used to be a regular frog, a tree frog to be exact. One with extremely deadly poison. A god of poison, death and traps. He looked like a regular boy wearing a cute frog hoodie. He too walked up to Levana who then set him on the throne.

Levana conjured a huge deck of UNO cards and set them down.

"Let's spend some time together children!" The children all flinched at her actions. 5 of them flinched because of her voice and the other 3 because her deck of cards were made of hard light.