The noise from the attack and the light of the fire outside were enough to wake Luna and Silva up, and both were only briefly confused before they recognised what was happening. Not that a whole lot was going on other than the throwing of a few more improvised incendiary devices, none of which accomplished all that much. It was almost as if trying to set a building entirely made of stone on fire was an incredibly foolish thing to do, even if the attempt contained its own fuel. The best result our attackers could hope for was that burning fuel splashed onto Luna or me, which might give us some fairly nasty burns. Maybe set our hair on fire but given the amount of Astral Power contained within my hair, I wasn’t certain it would burn, even if it were to be drenched in gasoline or whatever their bottles had contained. With me awake and aware, the entire thing was completely doomed to failure, as the fire they used, despite its partially magical nature, was no match for my own elemental abilities, allowing me to control and smother it with little effort.
“Now, what to do with them?” I muttered to myself as I stepped up to the window and focused on the four attackers. The first response was fairly simple: a series of stunning blows with Mind Magic, supported by Overflow, sending all of them into deep unconsciousness so I could easily collect the four for later judgment.
“Mom, please don’t kill them,” Luna asked me as I walked downstairs to the door, the request surprising me to the point that I paused. It wasn’t as if death was something completely foreign to Luna. We had performed more than enough experiments that ended with our test subjects dying a messy death, though we only performed those experiments on animals or undead, so why was she worried about those four?
“They tried to burn down a Shrine of Lady Hecate and the Lady wants to render Her own judgement. That only works as long as they are alive; once they are dead, Her options are somewhat limited. Not that punishing them in the afterlife is impossible. She just wants to keep Her options as open as possible, you know?” Luna asked, making me giggle just a little at the idea of death being the kindest option these four had to look forward to.
“I believe that is possible, yes,” I nodded, stepping outside to collect the idiots. On the other side of the farm, another door opened, making it obvious that somebody had noticed the flames and was investigating. Now, I was somewhat glad that I didn’t put out the irrelevant fire burning on the outside walls, as it was irrefutable evidence, alongside the broken windows, that these four had attacked my home.
Upon reaching the first pair, I used my Mind over Matter ability to see if I could carry them that way. However, I quickly noticed that their weight was a little beyond what I could easily lift. What I could do, on the other hand, was use the soil beneath them to shift the bodies, so the two bodies started to slide across the ground on a small earthwave as I went to get the other pair.
While I was doing that, one of the people checking out what had happened came across the open area, looking confused and frightened as she approached me. This was not a terrible surprise, given that the area was only dimly lit by the dying light of the fire on my wall and the torches the attackers had dropped when I knocked them out.
“What happened?” the woman asked. I had seen her earlier when checking on Cy, but she had never been introduced to me, so I had no idea what her name might be.
“These four seemed to have something against me and decided that fire would be the best tool to solve their issues. That issue being my continued existence,” I explained, my voice remaining calm, maybe even bored, as I wasn’t all that excited by the foolish attempt on my life. If they had been more competent, I might have considered it a problem, but given their incredible ineptitude, I couldn’t be bothered to get too excited.
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Well, not by the attack itself, but knowing that Lady Hecate wanted to enact a punishment of Her own was enough to make me curious. I wanted to see what a deity would come up with to punish those who had tried to set one of Her shrines on fire. Hopefully, it would be suitably ironic and painful while serving as a clear warning to anyone hearing that one should leave Lady Hecate’s shrines alone. That warning would likely also be applied to Luna and myself, adding that bit of extra security to us, which I considered just another benefit.
“They tried to kill you?” she asked, her voice rising in pitch to the point that I wondered if Silva would start to howl soon.
“Given that they tried to set my house on fire, I would assume so, yes. Maybe they wanted to have a nice midnight barbeque with me and my daughter as the main dish; I truly don’t care for their motivation. Only that they will be punished for their actions,” I explained, my voice darkening a little as I imagined what these people had hoped to accomplish. Incompetent or not, maybe I was not as calm about it as I would have liked. Given the queasy look on the woman’s face, she wasn’t feeling calm either and I had a feeling she wouldn’t ask any more questions.
“What are you going to do with them?” she asked, proving my feeling wrong just moments after I had it.
“We shall see, I have yet to decide, especially as it was not just I who was wronged. The house my daughter and I are using is also a Shrine to Lady Hecate, Goddess of Magic and a few other domains, which means these four morons attempted to destroy a divine shrine. As you might imagine, the Gods are somewhat displeased with those who try to destroy or defile their shrines,” I explained, getting a slightly strange look in response.
“It’s so weird to think that there are Gods out there,” the woman said, her voice betraying how shaken she was by the whole situation. Admirably, she didn’t just scurry back into their house but stuck around despite the cold and still somewhat wet night.
“I mean, I’ve been to church and stuff, but I never really believed that there was some God out there, watching me. It was always about the people at church and around me, you know?” she asked, and I could only nod my head in understanding. While I hadn’t been raised that way, I could intellectually understand the desire to belong to a community and, for a moment, I wondered how many religions before the change had formed due to that desire. How many gatherings had simply sought something they all shared, something that others didn’t have, to unite them under that single idea or ideal? It was a curious, though now fairly irrelevant, question.
“Now, there isn’t just one God. There are quite a few of them. And anyone with the right abilities can gain access to their powers, which neatly serves as evidence that they exist, something no church before the change could accomplish, at least to the best of my knowledge,” I told her, wondering if she would become interested in one of the deities out there.
“What do you think that Lady Hecate will do to them?” she asked, returning to the topic of the foursome I was now dragging towards the house after gathering up the second pair.
“That, I don’t know but I’m certain they will not enjoy it, not at all. Divine Curses can range from the unpleasant to the utterly debilitating, with essentially everything in between covered. Will She judge them on their limited success, or will She take into account that these four idiots weren’t really targeting Her shrine but Luna and me? I can’t answer those questions and won’t even try; I have no intention of getting on a deity's bad side if I can avoid it, especially not on Lady Hecate’s, as she has been quite generous to me. But regardless of deity, their bad side is not a place you would want to be,” I explained, a small chuckle escaping me.
“Yeah, even if I have no idea what a deity can do, I doubt they get that title just because they want to have it,” she nodded just as I opened the door. I had to briefly consider how to get the four fools into the altar room for judgment, but the question was taken from my hand when Silva came running, grabbing the first by the leg and starting to drag him across the floor. As she did, I made sure to use my magic to keep the dirt out; there was no need to drag it all across the floor.
“Do you think I can watch?” the woman asked, and after a moment of consideration, I simply nodded. She would serve as a witness that it wasn’t me who punished these fools but a higher power. It would be interesting to see what the locals did with that information.
