Chapter 33 Riven #2
“Yes, yes, I know. I was hoping you forgot.”
“Forgot a conversation we had just yesterday?”
It was worth a shot.
“Go on with your nosiness.”
“Very well. What’s your role?”
“The Empowerer.”
Her feet slam to a stop, but I lace my fingers through hers and pull her along. We really have a trek to make, and I don’t feel like walking all damn morning.
“Don’t get your panties all twisted on my behalf. I called myself that when we started taking on our roles here.”
“Why?” she asks quietly.
I shrug. “I guess that was my way of saying fuck you to our father and that cunt over there. It makes sense. I really do empower things over here.”
“Like what?”
I snicker and she squeezes my finger in a death grip.
“Have some patience. I’m about to show you when we get there.”
“Where’s there?”
“A farm that’s struggling. We’ve got about a mile’s walk.”
“Aww, that’s sad,” she says softly. Her silence lasts a millisecond. “So—”
My side eye and chuckle have her pressing her lips together and scowling at me.
“To help sate your curiosity, I’ll tell you this. My powers recharge by creating Chaos and Harmony without actually using my power.”
“What? How?”
“Like anytime I calm you down without my Harmony, it fuels that power. If I were to trip you up and you went tumbling, it’d charge my Chaos.”
She hums and I give her my own responding sound.
“How do you think mine will recharge?”
“Honestly?”
“Well, yeah. Please don’t convince me to do some shit that doesn’t even work.”
Like I’d ever do that…
“I believe yours is going to recharge by the opposite of external Chaos. Internal peace. I think you’ll need stillness, space to separate what everyone else is feeling, and to feel your own feelings, without interference.”
I peek out the corner of my eye and watch as she nods mindlessly as though what I said triggered a memory or something for her.
Her head twitches as she catches me staring at her, and she offers me a small smile.
“Well, if we’re going to discuss your power when we get to the farm, do you mind if we keep discussing mine?”
“Are you trying to get me to feel you up again? If that’s the case, you don’t have to make an excuse for that.”
“Shut up.” She laughs a sweet little sound and cuddles closer to me. “No, I really have a question.”
“Fine, but the offer is on the table.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Her wink makes my dick switch. “What’s the difference between Harmony and Accord.”
And there went my semi-hard-on.
My nose scrunches and no doubt my shoulders tense. She doesn’t miss a thing either as she cocks her head to the side.
“I get the sense you don’t care for the Goddess of Accord either?”
“I don’t care for any of the Beginning Gods, angel. Aside from Derivius and even sometimes he’s on my shit list.”
She grunts in agreement and I sigh.
Who better to explain this difference than me, I suppose.
“Harmony is the coexistence of keeping contrasting forces balanced—light and dark, chaos and order, life and death. So on and so forth. It can and sometimes will eliminate conflict between those forces to protect that balance. Mine does a mixture of that.
“Like I explained before, if I’m in a situation like in the Abandon, my Harmony will break free and take over. Balancing everyone else around me to protect me. When it isn’t like that, though, its goal and my goal for it is to balance what’s unbalanced. Accord would do no such thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Accord isn’t emotional, but logical. It’s agreement, alignment, and clarity. It thrives on knowledge, understanding truth, motive, logic, forward direction, and mutual comprehension. The Guider Designation stems from that domain.”
Her eyebrows rise.
“I didn’t know that, but I can see some of those attributes in Amick.”
Yeah, so can I.
“Think of Accord as the power that oversees interactions between people, objects, and even systems. It’s not about making things balanced or even nice. It’s about making things consistent. It’s the exact opposite of Chaos. It’s the ability to make things fit into a pretty little logical box.
“It cares about everyone being on the same page. For example, the Attendants. They’ve been deemed the lowest of society, and the vast majority of the population agrees.
Therefore, their opinions on the matter are in alignment.
Even the Attendants themselves nowadays agree with it.
Some don’t. You can’t take bestie’s opinion in the matter, though. She, I swear, is the minority.”
A gruff, dissatisfied sound comes out of her.
“I don’t like that very much.”
I bite my tongue and pause my words.
Way to go, dickhead.
You let your feelings about it slip right on in there.
I won’t be the reason she dislikes another one of her powers.
“Accord is the most difficult and confusing of the big seven in my opinion, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. There are some favorable abilities that can be used from that power.”
“From the way you were just gritting the words through your teeth a second ago, I find that hard to believe.”
“That was in direct correlation with the Goddess of Accord. Take her out of the equation and consider the power. Then it isn’t hard to believe.”
“Okay then,” she says with way less enthusiasm than a second ago.
“Let’s start with an exciting and irritating ability. The power is like a built-in lie finder.”
“What?”
“Uh-huh. Like I said, Accord cares about agreement and alignment. You can’t truly achieve either of those if your words are built on a lie.
Over time, the fibber will slip up, and their facts will no longer align.
The power can sense fractures, or well, contradictions in a statement.
Then you’ll know without a shadow of doubt you’re being lied to. ”
She hums and nods. “You know, I feel like I’ve always kind of sensed when I’m being lied to.”
“Now that you say that, you do have an annoying sense of knowing when someone’s keeping something from you or shielding some of the truth.”
Her saucy, evil little grin causes me to chuckle.
“Okay, so I like that I could possibly use this power to tell if someone’s lying to me. Can I make them tell the truth?”
“Not as far as I know. It’s more so about having the ability to know that, then adjusting or adapting your next move from there.”
“Huh. I can live with that. What else?”
I tap my lips and think about another ability that’s pretty cool. As long as the shit is used right.
“Oh, so you know Ellian is the God of Structure, a Domain under Accord, right?”
“Uh, no, I didn’t know that and I never in my life would’ve guessed that. It makes sense his domain is under Accord and he’s a Guider, though.”
“Well, now you do. So, in my opinion, his power is pretty sweet. In the sense of his abilities, structure doesn’t mean like order or laws, but legitimately like the structure of something. A book, a building, a statue, you get what I’m saying.”
“Yes, go on.”
“He’s the Chancellor over the Plentifuls because they’re responsible for building, growing, yada-yada, and he can see if there’s a break in the logic of the structure of something.
If there’s a crack in the foundation of a building, a spine in a book is split, or something’s wrong with the roots of a tree, and so on. ”
“Oh my gods, so that’s why he was in charge of overseeing the construction of our carriage.”
“Yep.”
“That’s actually fascinating. Do you think I’ll be able to do something like that?”
“I haven’t the first clue. We’ll have to test it out.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Anything else or any other abilities you think I might be able to do?”
“There are literally books upon books about this power. It’s difficult to narrow this shit down.”
She groans. “Nothing would make Amick happier if I sat my ass down and read some of those books.”
My laughter is purely condescending. It earns me a grip on my hand tight enough that my knees damn near buckle.
“Okay, okay, let’s see. I’m only covering the ones that interest me.”
“Fine by me.”
“I like this ability because it’s one that Chaos can slip through. This power can create contracts or agreements. Both physical and metaphysical.”
“Metaphysical?”
“Yeah, so to an extent, our doors have a metaphysical contract on each of them. We can wield that because of our essence weaved in with all the powers used to make our house. It’s like we all stood at our thresholds and said, ‘No one can pass this threshold without my permission.’ It’s a contract we made with ourselves and the home. ”
“Wait, you just said you liked this cause Chaos can slip through. Could you have slipped through my door when I stripped everyone’s permission?”
“Yeah, but that example isn’t a really good one now that I think about it, because technically, any of us could force our ways through each other’s doors.
It just comes at a cost. Like it could and would drain our power.
For a true contract to work under Accord, it has to have stability. Chaos isn’t stability.
“Yesterday, when Amick had you draw that line and you used Consequence, you could do that same exact thing but use Accord. That would be you creating a metaphysical contract that others have to abide by. I could sprinkle in some Chaos, maybe fracture the line for a moment long enough for me to slip through. That’s me breaking your contract. ”
She humphs, then falls deep into her mind. I give her a minute to think through whatever got her wheels turning.
“If that’s the case, couldn’t I put some extreme-ass contract over myself? Like ‘Let no harm ever come to me.’”
My lips curl into a tight smile.
I prefer it when it’s Amick bursting her bubble.
“Unfortunately, no. This is one of those complicated layers of the power. Accord is very literal. Ambiguity weakens and can even completely dismantle a contract in place. Also, self-made contracts are temporary. Eventually, the power in them fades.”
“Valories. It feels like this power is so much more complicated than the other ones I have a grasp on.”