22. Chapter Twenty-Two #3
“I have to say,” Ena began, “I really am fascinated by the idea of Omnis. But…I’m confused too.”
“What confuses you?” Kaya asked.
“Well, we were always taught that Gaia is the Goddess of balance. And as witches, we work to maintain the balance of life and death, so they exist in equal measure. But Iblis is the one who causes the chaos, or instability, that we work against. But…the stryx haven’t even heard of Gaia or Iblis.
They just believe they’re one being—Omnis—who has the qualities of both.
And I guess what I’m wondering is…is that really true?
Are Iblis and Gaia just one being, instead of two? ”
Kaya sighed. “You are thinking exactly as I did when I first arrived with the stryx,” she said with a kind smile. “It’s jarring, isn’t it? To realize that the way you know the world to be is maybe not what others know it to be?”
“Yes,” Ena said. “It is. I suspected as much when we summoned Iblis during the unbinding ritual, and the being that arrived was so similar to Gaia. I just never thought that they were…one and the same.”
“You can always continue to think of them as two separate entities, if it makes more sense to you,” Kaya said. “There is no harm in that.”
Ena nodded. That was kind of her to say, but still…
“I don’t know if it does, though,” Ena said.
“I already knew that the way witches think is flawed. It has become clear to me, after getting to know Ty and the other daemons, that Iblis’s chaos can be necessary too.
We all have the capacity for both peace and disruption within us.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“That is exactly why the stryx believe what they do. That balance and chaos are two ends of the same arrow. Chaos is the head—sharp and disruptive—and balance is the fletching—necessary for stability. Both qualities are part of the maintenance of the world, and both are necessary for the shooting of the arrow. They each come from Omnis in different ways, and at different times. And the stryx, they are the bow, the ones who enact both balance and chaos as vessels of Omnis.”
“But,” Ena said, still feeling muddled about it all, “what do they think Omnis’s will is? How do they interpret it?”
“Omnis has no will,” Max chimed in from next to them. “Omnis just is. Trying to understand its will is like trying to understand why it snows and for whom. There is no greater purpose, no direction. It is just Omnis, and it works in mysterious ways.”
Ena didn’t quite know how to feel about the idea that Gaia and Iblis were really one being, one force, that had no will at all.
And the fact that she’d been fruitlessly serving the balance of Gaia her whole life, when in reality, Iblis and chaos were also a part of Gaia, and Gaia was really just Omnis…
her head hurt trying to think of it all.
She felt all at once frustrated, slightly annoyed, and yet also… relieved.
Because so much of what Kaya and Max said made sense to her as a witch who had begun to embrace both the will of Gaia and Iblis inside her. But…
“Wait a second,” Ena said, holding up her hands in pause. “How do you explain that when the daemons were severed from Gaia, they only knew how to interpret Iblis’s will, and incite chaos? How was that possible if Gaia and Iblis are the same being, with no will?” she asked Kaya.
“That is an excellent question,” she said, “and I have my own theories about it, now that I, too, know about Omnis. I think that when the witches severed daemons from Gaia, they were simply severing them from a very particular part of Omnis—disconnected from the whole, if you will. And that is why things got so out of balance, and why they were not able to access those parts of themselves that entreated for peace and balance,” Kaya mused.
“But if Omnis truly has no will, whose does Ty feel now that he has access to Gaia again? Whose do I feel inside of me?” she asked, speaking the question that haunted her the most out loud.
“I have thought about this a lot,” Kaya said, her face contemplative and serious. “The stryx believe that Omnis is a part of all of us, just as we are a part of it. Omnis itself has no will of its own. So I think, Ena, that the will you feel inside you, truly is just your own.”
That thought hit her like a ton of bricks.
If Gaia had no will, then were witches just serving their own will—the parts of them that wanted peace and balance?
She truly didn’t know what to make of that.
It was a shift in her entire way of thinking.
Her entire way of Knowing. Her mind almost rejected it—there was no way that could be true.
And yet…there was a quiet truth to it. Something that spoke to her.
She didn’t exactly know what to do with these thoughts yet—if she could ever do anything with them—but she appreciated them nonetheless. Because maybe it meant that she didn’t have to work to serve Gaia, or Iblis. Maybe she didn’t have to choose between them. Maybe she could forge her own path.