Bargaining is the first step of any contract between mortals and Powerbound. As with every intrinsic contract, what resembled a casual conversation resulted in rigid regulations after the fact. Mankind, especially, proved itself a tough negotiator even in the face of what they ought consider be the divine. They are prone to bicker over the smallest clauses. Worst of all is their appetite for precious metals, rivalled only by their thirst for power. It is no surprise, then, that some would spend days or even years bargaining over the terms of their contract with such a vicious creature.
When moonlight graced Alba's eyes once more, he woke up sprawled in front of his window. He sharply raised his back from the floor and held his belly. The slight hunger he always carried with him on the monastery's diet had disappeared.
In fact, most of his usual discomforts had.
The cold disappeared, the slight pains in his knees and elbows… His body almost weightless, he stood, and the floor squeaked as he turned around. The shack hadn't changed one bit. After a full turn, he met Her eyes. It had to be Her.
The goddess stood still.
The ruffles of her black strapless dress billowed to the side at the same steady rhythm as her long, wavy blond hair. He drowned in her presence.
The bandages on her eyes made her all the more ominous as they also seemed haphazardly wrapped around various parts of her body like her neck and part of her arms.
Said bandages also struggled to hide the letter-shaped runes—letters he obviously couldn't read—carved on her arms and neck and the side of her face.
Her beauty was frightening, cold.
She stood still but kept her arm and hand extended towards him, as though she waited for something.
So Alba approached.
Once near enough, he instinctively took her soft hand in his owns, but like a walking corpse, she had not an ounce of warmth. Her head tilted gently to the side at the gesture, slowly and carefully enough for it to be hard to notice she had even moved.
"I… I found you, at last." Alba said, squeezing her hand. "Tell me, what is it I must do? What is it you always meant? Who are you?"
"Love," she simply answered.
She acted like a lifeless puppet, uttering that word anytime he asked about her.
"It is my reason, and who I am. Love," she said at some point.
He prompted her many more times before letting go of her hand and sitting to figure out what was happening.
He looked out the window and noticed how still the night was. The sky looked like an unfinished painting, dotted with stars that didn't flash as they ought to, and clouds that fizzled to reveal a full moon.
Not one monk had passed through the window in what felt like hours, and the marajs weren't known to be diurnal.
He slid the sash up and didn't feel the air brush his face. He vaulted over the window and walked towards the temple.
The village had become but an empty shell of the real world.
Outside, maraj monks stood frozen mid-action, some halfway through steps as they walked in the snowy night, others stargazing idly before their shacks, their gaze forever fixed on the sky.
The still flakes of snow melted on Alba's face and robe as he walked through an eerie Little Argiscio.
The farther he got from his shack, the dimmer the moon's light got, until darkness overcame his vision, and his consciousness then rapidly faded. He soon after woke up, back inside the small shack, sprawled in front of the window. That world, like a strange dream, didn't feel real.
Inside the shack, the goddess hadn't moved an inch.
"I don't…understand," he asked, and she finally turned to face him, keeping her arm extended in front of her. "Why are you keeping me trapped here?"
She shook her head.
"The world is empty," she replied. "The world is fading, the world is dark. But it is your world."
It didn't make a lick of sense, and Alba quietly gave up. He had no interest in the real world after all, not as he stood before a god.
"Hmm… What is it that you want, exactly?"
"Think," she said. He startled as she said the words. "You know."
And somehow, it was true. He knew what it all meant and what she wanted, as if a veil had been hanging over his mind his entire life.
Soulbinding.
Not only was it real, but it was the only thing she thought about. She was weak, fading, and in desperate need of a champion. She had struggled for years to reach him, just as he had struggled to reach her.
"B-but you ask too much of me!" he shouted. "How could you think I'd consent to…this?" he said, referring to the contract he now understood as if he'd read it a thousand times over.
It went over the process of Soulbinding in excruciating detail.
The branding would lead to her complete ownership of his body, even in death, on top of an offering of his memories every time he would draw on her strength. She simply wrote the thing off by calling it "Souvenirs." Even for divine aid, it was a steep fucking price. His awe quickly transformed into ire, indignation even, as she smiled.
"You are strong, mortal. But you long for me, need for me." She lowered her hand, moving painfully slow once more before clasping both hands over her belly. "Let us be reasonable."
After her show of flattery, Alba could see the "offer" change in his mind.
It was mostly the same, but she promised a new and improved body in small compensation. Perhaps the gods didn't understand that power meant nothing if kept on a leash. All you had to do to understand it was to look at the useless Duke of Dilmun.
The mystical encounter quickly transformed into the divine equivalent of market haggling. He couldn't gauge how long the bargaining took as the world had stopped moving, but it took weeks (yes, weeks) before the goddess spoke to him like a proper human would. They now sat face to face. Alba sat cross-legged while she just knelt. He treated her no differently than a greedy jeweller at this point.
"You said I was looking for you," he said, his eyes closed as he thought the deal through once more. "You're mistaken. I looked for the divine and the answer it could provide. Of your own admission, striking a silly master-slave deal with your kind would provide me with neither." She visibly twitched. He could see sparks of anger in her posture and the way her hands adopted a claw-like grip on the floor. "And judging by how long this is taking, you either have no other options or really, really like me," he chuckled. "And somehow, I doubt that."
"Your body in the waking world is still sick with my essence, without my help you're doomed."
"Didn't we get over this already? You can even kill me yourself if you must, I won't resist."
"I could also torture you," she said with disturbing calm in her voice.
"You could."
She rubbed the end of her chin, thinking, but she didn't seem to be able to think of anything that would make him budge. In his mind, he felt her rewriting the offer. The manipulative cunt showed her true colours at last. Perhaps that last offer was what she sought from the beginning of their bargaining. That much seemed obvious from the fact she dropped the "subservience clause" too rapidly for his taste.
"Give me the girl then," she said, "she won't feel or know any better. You will be free in life, then only in death shall I take you both."
It was her best offer yet, and he shamefully considered it. The girl could be quite annoying, but it certainly didn't warrant him essentially selling her soul off to some strange entity.
During the bargain, he'd grown wary of the thing. She promised too much and asked for prizes that didn't seem that valuable to him.
Why his soul? He wasn't special.
Certainly, that didn't match up to "the strength of ten men" or "the key to one's heart and mind". The deal could be either a lie or a clever deception, and he liked none of these thoughts.
He liked his own twisted mind even less for considering the offer at all.
Was he mistaken about the goddess's intentions? Even if she had tried warning him of the ills plaguing his homeland of Dilmun, and the eventual fate of his House, could such a vicious creature ever be trusted?
Curses, he thought. Why must this be so complicated? I have it right here, my perfect opportunity, my ticket back into the race… Indeed, did he go through so many ordeals, hunger, sleepless nights…all for it to be stopped by morality?
She seemed to enjoy the effect her offer had on him.
So, biting his lower lip and breathing in and out deeply, he begrudgingly gave his answer.
"Fuck off."