Legacy of a Trickster Goddess
In a world of interwoven stories, it is only natural that deities would work beside and against one another, that their interests would cross through time. This pattern finds perhaps its truest form in the challenge of power between the wolf-god Fenrir and the taloned goddess Rasvana.
If you enjoy lore-rich worlds, be sure to check out Phoenix Rising book one in the high fantasy series Feather & Flame!
How the Dragons Came to Be
Long before the First Age and the separation of the planes that followed their creation, the goddess Rasvana looked with envy upon the first creation of the wolf-god Fenrir—the daimon—wild wolves who traversed the planes of the world, melding leaf, limb, and flower with their fur and living in communion with their creator deity.
Rasvana saw the adoration the daimon bore their creator, and she wished the same adulations for herself. Other deities discouraged her, saying she underestimated the weight of so many dependents—maintain your freedom, they said. But Rasvana was not a goddess to take others’ advice.
“Make me a people,” she bade the wolf-god. “Give them wings and scales and a living breath. Grant them eyes sharp as daggers and infinite souls in near-infinite bodies. Make them as invincible as I am.”
“You are a goddess in your own right,” Fenrir replied. “Cast such a people yourself.”
Rasvana gnashed her teeth and withdrew to the deepest forests of the world. There she tried, but the creatures who emerged fell short of her visions of what those made to look like herself should be. From these first trials, the wyverns and winged serpents emerged, but the goddess wanted something more.
She returned to Fenrir’s side. “My efforts have failed. You know already how to craft a people. The daimon look to you to lead them. Teach me your process that I may have the same.”
“We must each find our path on our own,” the wolf-god answered. “I cannot aid you and preserve my energy for my second people.” In this he spoke of the Lycan who were little more than a bright spark in the corner of the wolf-god’s eyes at that early moment.
Curls of smoke slithered from the goddess’s nostrils. She trailed a taloned claw around her sister goddess’s Cassandra’s shoulders and tugged her closer. “Let the goddess of fate bear witness to a pact between you and I, then. As you are so confident and wise, you will not mind playing against me in a game of chance. Should you win, you and your wolves will go on as you are. But should you lose, you will serve me a year and a day and teach me to craft a people of my own, those who will fear and adore me in turn.”
Fenrir grew tired of the goddess’s demands, but he saw the golden glint in her eyes. Rasvana would not allow the matter to rest until she was satisfied. His people would survive his year of captivity, he knew, but the goddess would not count herself so lucky after trying to bridle a wolf, even for so short a time. “Very well, I accept your challenge.” The wolf-god bowed his head to Cassandra whose eyes widened, but the goddess of fate held her counsel.
Thrice the deities competed in a game of chance of Cassandra’s design. In the first, Fenrir took the match. The second fell to Rasvana. The goddess licked her lips along her jagged rows of teeth for their third match. Fenrir shut his eyes and breathed his prayer into Cassandra’s mind.
With a gasp from the goddesses, the pieces fell in Rasvana’s favor. Her delight was so great that billows of flame rippled forth from her mouth and rent apart the clouds in the sky. “Victory is mine,” she cried.
The daimon howled in despair, believing their lord to have been taken from them against his will. For a year and a day, they stalked the lands, searching for Rasvana’s hiding place.
And for a year and a day, Fenrir wove his revenge. He taught the goddess to pour her power into her people, showed her how to weave the fabric of her being into scales and skin. Yet he withheld his own dearly won knowledge of the nature of creation—were the creatures Rasvana designed to be as powerful as the goddess wished, they would each require a spark of the design, the spark of godhood itself.
Fenrir taught the goddess to grant each of her creations a gift, divine magic in the form of a changent scale. These would allow them to survive among the fae and later the Lycan for they could hide the secret of their heritage in a changing form. These scales granted them each a unique magical expression—breath that could command shadows, a wind so powerful as to fell even ancient trees. Rasvana poured out her memories, her longing, her greed, making each of her creations more wonderful than the last.
Cassandra watched in silence, held by the pact she and Fenrir had made that day of Rasvana’s bargain—Do not interfere, the wolf-god had commanded. Your sister’s recklessness yields a price to be paid.
He was not wrong, the maker of the Lycan. Cassandra knew this in her heart. I ask but one thing in return, she answered. When your lesson is through, entrust my sister’s children to me, that I may watch over her soul, the work of her life, until even the worlds yet to come are no more.
Fenrir knew better than to argue with the goddess of fate—such is the blessing and curse of Cassandra’s magic after all. Let it be as you say. And the matter was done.
The goddess of fate grew nearer as the days of Fenrir’s captivity came to a close. “Is it always so tiring to create?” Cassandra overheard her sister say to Fenrir. The plumes of smoke that had once graced her nostrils were little more than a soft spring breeze.
“Not always,” the wolf-god answered, “but in the case of your children, they will be mightier than any other groups of beings could possibly be.”
“That is good,” Rasvana sighed. “I wish them strength, longevity, and cleverness above all.”
The goddess’s eyes fluttered shut as she wove the last changent scale into being. Her form rippled and faded into little more than mist and voice.
“What will you call them, my lady?” the wolf-god asked Rasvana’s fading form.
“Dragons,” she answered, the fire of her gaze finding Fenrir as the last pieces of her essence flitted into the changent scale. “Our battle is not over, Fenrir. For you have tricked me once, but my thousand children will live on through the ages and seek to fool you again and again.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Fenrir said with a smile. He planted a kiss upon the remnants of Rasvana’s brow. “You have done what no other deity had the heart to do,” he said in benediction, “and your children will live on, the mightiest in all of creation—”
“Until the very ends of all the world,” Cassandra added.
The pair turned from the changent scales and the sleeping, glimmering eggs left in Rasvana’s wake. Cassandra smiled sadly as she perceived the lowered head of the wolf-god, the slow thump of his heart as he returned to the daimon, his first people. Such is the love that will make and unmake the worlds again and again, Cassandra thought to herself.
That year and a day left Fenrir forever changed. He has longed for the challenge and presence of the great dragon mother ever since. Neither his daimon nor the Lycan can fill the hole in his heart that she left, for in the final dragon, to protect and seal Rasvana’s creation, Fenrir left a part of himself.
And for Rasvana, she who poured her divine essence into each of her thousand offspring who would be born and die across all the ages of the world, she lives on in dwindling number, but her divinity beats still, sparkling in changent scales, each as unique and magical as the goddess who created them.
Thank you so much for joining me for the interwoven lore of the Storyverse! Find out more about the daimon and their history in my upcoming novel Phantom: Heir of Lilith book one.
