What Thea hadn't expected: though these constructs were summoned, they never disappeared. That detail suddenly made the ability remarkable.
Whether it was magic, lantern ring constructs, psychic force, or even Lao's creation of an Oasis—once the original energy expenditure ran dry, the creation dissolved into air. Nobody had ever heard of one that persisted indefinitely.
But Lady Styx's constructs could.
Thea's perception ran far deeper than Fiona's. She could tell the stone and diamond golems contained minimal soul information—at most like the ordinary drones of the Zerg, carrying a faint, muddled flicker of awareness.
But even that was invaluable.
"You have talent." Thea had originally planned to put this self-styled "Lady Styx" down on the spot. She'd just changed her mind.
Before Lady Styx could get a word out, a flash of black light—the purple psychic shield she'd relied on to cross the universe was pierced straight through, and her psychic power, normally as responsive as her own fingers, was severed in an instant—a fair, jade-like hand had closed around her throat.
This was nothing like Kara.
Kara had known many of her techniques, and was simply stronger than Lady Styx—so it had taken some time.
But Lady Styx was too lopsided. Extraordinary psychic ability; speed a glaring weak point. Thea had just beaten her on every front.
"I'll change my name—I'll change it—please just let me go—" With her ability cut off, an immortal was no different from anyone else: flesh and blood. Stab them in a vital spot and they died all the same.
At that moment, Lady Styx was cursing every ancestor who'd ever picked her name. What a disaster. One name and she'd drawn an enemy like this!
Thea considered it. "I am the Goddess of Death. Your name is a little offensive. But I'm generous—I'll let it go."
If you're letting it go then let go of my throat! Lady Styx managed what she hoped looked like an appropriately meek expression.
Just as she was wondering whether this person was the type who said one thing and did another—
As it turned out, Thea was perfectly reasonable. The hand released. Lady Styx sank to the ground—being held by the throat was no pleasant experience.
Gasping, having just been to death's door and back, she wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else. The arena audit she'd come here for? Completely erased from her mind. Run. Now. Immediately.
She tried to step back. Nothing. She tried harder—and realized it wasn't just her feet. Her entire body wasn't responding.
Thea's hand was gone; her psychic power had naturally returned—but now Lady Styx felt a foreign psychic force operating her body. The ability wasn't rare. This was a powerful telepath.
She traced it to its source and found a dopey, ape-like creature—blinking at her with an endearingly vacant expression, giving a little wave.
Psychic control was something many cosmic beings possessed. Knowing about it was one thing; she had no easy counter for it. Normally she'd simply overwhelm it with the raw volume of her own psychic output. But Grodd's psychic strength was no less than hers. Which was deeply inconvenient.
Psychic power had countless applications—their contrasting methods made that obvious. Lady Styx had developed hers extensively: manifesting constructs, materializing intangibles, shields, flight, drawing up underground fire, displacement. She mostly projected outward.
Grodd, by contrast, had barely studied his own ability. In Thea's estimation, he'd actually regressed at least thirty percent compared to his original timeline. No variety to speak of—but comparatively more focused.
In an open fight, Grodd would lose to Lady Styx. Badly. But he'd caught a break: she'd just been released by Thea with her psychic power still unmobilized, and he'd caught her completely off-guard.
"I won't kill you—but you'll stay near me for the next few days. Any problem with that?" Thea asked, utterly at ease.
Her whole body still stiff, Lady Styx could only blink rapidly to signal compliance.
Thea studied her for a long moment. Truthfully she couldn't read anything—Lady Styx's sclera were entirely black; there was nothing to see. But to maintain the composure fitting a goddess, she nodded anyway and gestured for Grodd to stand down.
"I'll be watching you," Fiona murmured in her ear.
Lady Styx rubbed her throat and stretched. She was furious. You are guests in my home and you dare threaten me. Where is justice? Where is any sense of decency?
But she didn't dare make a scene. The strong prey on the weak—universal law. Sovereign at dawn, prisoner by dusk; it happened all the time.
After a moment's hesitation, sensing no immediate threat to her life, she steadied herself somewhat. She decided she'd observe what these people actually wanted.
She stood there with a hangdog expression, waiting for instructions—and found Thea entirely absorbed in studying the diamond constructs. She was tempted to mutter a country bumpkin under her breath, but then remembered Grodd could read minds, and immediately began counting sheep.
"Hey—come here. Walk me through how you summon these diamond golems." Thea was entirely unself-conscious about it.
Lady Styx wanted to point out she didn't go by "Hey"—but her name drew too much hostility right now and she couldn't announce it. So Hey it was.
You don't argue when you're under someone else's roof. She answered readily—mechanics, process, the whole sequence—rattling through it in full. To demonstrate compliance, she summoned a fresh one on the spot. The one Fiona had frozen and the half-destroyed one were poor reference material anyway.
Thea's brow creased slightly. After several rounds of questions, it became clear that summoning the golems was closer to instinct for Lady Styx. She knew the what, not the why. At its core, it was an earth-type psychic ability—the same fundamental nature as Terra's power, just perhaps a hundred times stronger.
"Can you give it life?" Thea created a stone golem with one casual gesture—but her craftsmanship was on another level entirely. This one had eyes, a nose, a readable expression. Lifelike, like a work of art. Nothing like Lady Styx's rough stacks of piled rock.
Lady Styx had absolutely noticed how effortlessly it was made. Thea's stone golem was already more refined than her diamond constructs—and she'd done it in passing.
She probed it carefully with her psychic power. "I can't. Yours and mine have... no resonance at all."
She watched Thea's expression at the same time. She's not going to snap at me for that, is she?
"All right. Try this instead—see if you can create a living thing in here." Thea produced her two-dimensional world.
No understanding of magic. No experience with divine power. But as a long-lived being, Lady Styx had formidable perception. The moment she laid eyes on the 2D world, she knew it was something extraordinary.
"This is—a world. A world that's being born?"
Thea nodded, and acknowledged her perception with a look of approval.
Lady Styx stared at her, unblinking.
Who is this woman? She's already approaching the threshold of creation?