Chapter 28

When both Hank and Adair noticed the seemingly forgotten village, they immediately forgot about their pain and rushed towards the structure, Adair dropping her makeshift cane in the process. When they were halfway there, though, Adair yelled which got her companions attention which in turn got him to stop and when he did she wrote to him that they should be careful because, for all they knew, this could be a trap for people coming out of the forest. This slowed them down a lot, and when they reached the open area around the broken wall surrounding the ruined village, they decided to make a little camp.

Since they were in the wide-open and could see almost everything around them they decided that it was probably safe enough to eat. The only thing they couldn't see was deep into the tall grass that made up the grasslands, but even if someone or something decided to come up for a sneak attack, they hoped they would have enough time to react since the grasslands were a couple hundred feet away.

During their trip out of the forest Hank noticed that when he ate the fish, it also seemed to restore his stamina and made his legs less tired. This had allowed them to travel farther than they normally would have been able to.

While they were eating, no surprise attack happened which was relieving for the duo. Once they were done eating, they walked around the remains of a ruined wall that surrounded the ruins, looking in to if there was any danger in the decaying village before entering. Still, by now, they had very few expectations of there being any traps or danger inside this village since it appeared that it had been abandoned for years, if not decades.

As they explored it eventually turned to nighttime, and they decided that it was not a good time to explore a place since they knew little about this area when it was dark out. One thing Adair did not expect was to see the stars and moons, though. She had become so used to the completely pitch-black darkness of the forest that she had completely forgotten that usually, people could see during the night by seeing the stars and moons.

This light allowed her to do something she had wanted to do ever since her wings were grown, and that was to open the books and see if she was correct and that her wings needed to be grown before the books could be opened. She did not do this on the trip out of the forest because each time they took a break Adair was so tired that she just fell asleep.

She was not sure why this time opening the books would work, but she had a hunch that this would work, and if it didn't, she was all out of ideas and resided that if they wouldn't open now that she would just put the books aside and wait to ask her mom about them.

So before they went to bed she asked Hank to get the books out of the bag which he did after a bit of questioning. When she got the books, and when she looked at the first one, she noticed a major change to the books because she could now see the books were numbered.

She was also pleased that the books appeared to be written in the language that George had taught her since if it wasn't she would have to learn a new language to decipher the books which is something she did not want to do.

Before she opened the books she thought about why they were now different compared to before and she realized that now not only did she have wings but also there was moonlight which she did not have before. So she did not know if this was due to it being in the moonlight or because her wings had grown that caused the books to change but at this point she did not really care.

She then lined all the books up in numeric order and tried to open the first book which had the number 0 on its cover. It opened easily, but as she opened the book, she felt like something was wrong, and she briefly considered setting down the books but due to her excitement at finally opening the books, she ignored this feeling and started reading.

"In the beginning, there was nothing except a void. There were no beings, no plants, no planets, no angels, no demons, no good, and no evil, only Anahel and." After reading the first sentence, she started jumping through the other books seeing if this was really what she thought it was, and after jumping through, she had thoroughly determined that the first book was an introduction book of sorts and the remaining 12 each talked about a different one of the Gods.

Some of the books did not make sense though and after rereading several of the parts that did not make sense over and over again she realized that it read poorly because it was missing the names of the Gods. And places where the names should have been just did not have a name. Even pronouns were removed which referenced what she assumed to be Gods which was just confusing for her.

The only name she was able to read was Anahel but for some reason or another all the other Gods names no longer existed or were somehow hidden from Adair. She ignored this fact though and continued skimming through the books. After a while she concluded that these books were only about the Eleven Gods and not about magic or superpowers.

This was disappointing to Adair because she had hoped that it was a magic book of sorts or a history book, or even another cartoon story book, pretty much anything but a book about religion.

This is because while she was a "god" during the test in her previous lifetime, she was just a more powerful being with special abilities and limitations. After experiencing being "god," she had difficulty believing that an actual "god" existed.

She continued to skim through the books but eventually she started actually reading the books but she disregarded what every book said until she reached the book with a 8 displayed on the cover. With each previous book besides the first one she didn't feel anything wrong but when she touched this book she felt that something was very off compared to when she first skimmed it. Almost as if this time it was magical. She contemplated on putting the book down and just moving on to book 9 but curiosity got the best of her and when she did she was teleported to an unknown space.

When Adair arrived, quickly looked around, wondering what the heck happened since all she did was open the eighth book. She wondered why this reaction didn't happen the first time she opened the book but she had no idea why so she decided to just look around. For a while she saw nothing, not even the ground she was standing on but eventually, a lady with eight sets of crystal wings appeared in front of her. Adair quickly realized that this lady was Anahel based on the description from the first book she had read.

Once Adair realized this, this could be quite troublesome since she had no power compared to someone who was considered a god. She was even pretty sure a fake god like what she had been during the Galactic Test would be more than enough to defeat her right now especially if she was in their divine realm. Anahel stared at Adair as if expecting her to do something, and when she realized that she wasn't doing as she wished, an angelic voice said aloud "Is this how you are supposed to react to meeting your God?"

When Adair heard this, she started to kneel subconsciously until she realized why am I listening to this person. She isn't my god. Why am I listening to her? But her body wasn't listening to her as she thought this. She tried to stop kneeling, but she was still slowly kneeling. She tried to move her arms to stop herself from kneeling. But eventually she just decided to go with it since maybe bootlicking this "god" would get her something in return. This continued and she was almost done kneeling until her mouth randomly opened and screamed out, "DU BIST NICHT MEIN GOTT!" "YOU ARE NOT MY GOD!" And when she did this, she felt the force making her kneel stop.

Adair had no idea where this voice came from because she did not know how to speak the language that came out of her mouth which meant that whatever she screamed made no sense to her at all. She also realized that the voice that came out of her mouth was way deeper than her actual voice but it sounded very familiar but also unfamiliar which greatly confused Adair.

As Adair was contemplating what happened to her, Anahel was also going through her own revelations and when Adair eventually looked up at Anahel she saw a shocked expression on Anahel's face. However, Adair then heard the command kneel inside her mind again, and she started to kneel again, she repeated the same process as before and the kneeling stopped and she was able to stand normally again.

This appeared to have intrigued Anahel since, to Adair's dismay, she tried several other commands, which Adair kept on yelling "DU BIST NICHT MEIN GOTT!'' which stopped the command. Eventually, a crystal glow surrounded Adair, and when this happened, Adair was forced to kneel. The glow also stopped the mysterious voice from yelling whatever it was yelling to stop her from kneeling.

Anahel then said, "there we go, this is better. I was starting to get worried you were someone who shouldn't exist anymore or a demigod from the other gods to try to assassinate me. I will need to look into this." After she said this, the crystal glow disappeared from Adair, and Adair immediately shot up against her own will, tripping in the process and falling on her face.

Once this happened, she tested out if she was trapped on the ground, and when she realized she wasn't, she stood up, this time of her own volition and started to step away from Anahel. This caused a chuckle out of Anahel, who said, "little one, you have no power in my domain. Don't act so frightened, if I wanted to hurt you, or trap you I would have already. So let's have a chat."

When Anahel said this she had dozens of questions swirling around head ranging from what was that voice that came out of my mouth, why didn't it want me to kneel, why can I understand Anahel when I never heard this language before? Where am I? Is she a fake or real god? Will she actually not hurt me? Why does she want to chat? And many other questions that she did not know the answer to.

Adair thought for a second but then realized that no matter what the mysterious voice that stopped her from kneeling and the other commands Anahel said seemingly disappeared so she was on her own, so she stopped backing up but she still kept vigilance just in case Anahel tried to do something. Anahel then sighed and asked what her name was.

To this, Adair did not know how to respond since she could not speak the language. So she signaled that she needed something to write on which Anahel gave a confused look to but quickly materialized a crystal like sheet of paper and a crystal pen and handed them to Adair.

When Adair got this device Adair tested it out to see its functionality and once she realized what it was capable of she responded by writing "Adair". Anahel then asked how she was able to come here. To this, Adair contemplated lying. However, she realized that Anahel could probably read through almost any lie she told. So she decided to write the truth, or at least most of it. She explained that her mom sent her away with the books and when she opened the 8th one it teleported her here.

A strange expression appeared on Anahel's face when Adair wrote this, and Anahel started walking forward towards Adair and reached out to touch Adair's forehead. Adair's natural reaction was to pull away and block whatever Anahel was trying to do. But her response was futile and Anahel's soft hand touched Adair's forehead, and since it did not appear to be harmful along with the fact there was nothing she could do about it, she decided to not resist whatever Anahel was trying to do.

In Adair's mind, she lived through every moment of her second life, starting with the moment she was born to the strange pyramid with wings, to being sent through the teleporter, to the storms to her wings growing, draining the lake, and then eating the fish and leaving the big blackfish alone then lastly opening the books outside the village.

For some reason though every image involving her mom did not have her mom in the picture which greatly confused Adair since in her mind it appeared that she was doing all of these actions by herself and sometimes she was even floating in the air when her mom was holding her which was not even close to what actually happened.

Once this was all done, a look of shock came over Anahel's face, and she exclaimed, "Interesting."