Chapter 192: Pawns of Gods


    “Sooooo, are we there yet?”


    Gwydion the Knowledge Priest neutrally lifted an eyebrow, his hands still on the skimmer steering orb. He seemed non-divinely blessed with incredible patience. He was a quiet sort, although didn’t shy away from conversation, answering neither overly verbose nor unkindly short. They were skimming outwards of Kallid, towards the Eternal Storm in the north, although passing over a ridge to the northeast. Nara did not think it was possible to move around the storm, and wondered if they’d eventually have to pass through the deadly light show of unending lightning like Lake Maracaibo.


    “Not yet. The Undeath priest is careful not to approach Kallid to closely.”


    “Isn’t even this too close to a diamond ranker?”


    “It is,” he acknowledged. “As an outworlder, you may not be aware of the ‘unofficial’ rules.”


    “Rules?”


    “Any significant power on the world stage is backed by a diamond ranker, rather directly or indirectly,” he explained, meeting Nara’s inquisitive gaze. He needn’t look at the road to see it. “It presents a conundrum. Diamond rankers are a power too powerful, and any conflict with a diamond ranker on one side and none on the other becomes a massacre. The rules are a promise for no diamond ranker to interfere unless there is a diamond ranker on the opposing side. This, of course, is waived for events that threaten the well-being of the world, such as the messenger attack, or the forces of Destruction, who don’t care about any local rules.”


    “Well wouldn’t Undeath just use his diamond rankers anyway? Why would he care?”


    “Should Undeath field a diamond ranker where there is none, then he would be struck with the overwhelming might of several diamond rankers. As you would say, they would… ‘Gang up’. No matter Undeath’s forces, they do not surpass the combined might of diamond rankers of the world.”


    “So Undeath doesn’t want to throw the first punch.”


    “No,” Gwydion said with a dry smile. “Nor do we want him to. A diamond ranker’s ‘first punch’ could unleash massive destruction, especially an Undeath diamond ranker.”


    “Like a zombie apocalypse.”


    “Undeath apocalypse,” Gwydion mused. “We do not call them ‘zombies’.”


    “So as long as the…death toll is low, Undeath and his forces are allowed to exist?” Nara said with a bitter sharpness, but it was not as if she did not understand the concept of ‘acceptable losses’. Capitalism was more than willing to churn the meat grinder for profit. Or oil. Praise the military-industrial complex.


    “A campaign to destroy them would be costly, in many ways,” Gwydion said. “A likely victory, but a pyrrhic one.” He tilted his head, then added another comment. “As such, the situation in Rowen is so closely monitored.”


    “So, the world can start to shore up defenses? Or to join in as a strike team to finish the job if it’s going to get started in the first place?”


    “Perhaps. No one can know.” There was a subtle lilt of humor in his voice.


    Gradually, the sky darkened, consumed by the wool blanket of black clouds, just as static as a sweater in winter. Glimmering threads of lightning wove from cloud swell to cloud swell, then striking the ground with abrupt and overwhelming violence. The thunder was near constant, a percussive line or a drum solo, with rolling snares, booming bass drum, and the sharp clash of cymbals. The wind picked up, scattering across the barrier of the storm-traversing specialty skimmer, and the rain began its tinkling music.


    Nara peered into the storm far into the distance, searching for something—the tower of black ice, perhaps—but there was only darkness to be found, all light consumed by the storm where the tower was, no discernable shape to be found. Even lightning died across the void, winking out as if space itself ceased to exist, for there was nothing for it to cross.


    A was around an hour into the storm, the roar of winds and tempo of rain ever escalating, that Gwydion released several magic drones. They scattered into the dark, and Nara soon lost even their blinking lights of blue magic to the dark of the storm. Her bronze rank perception was not enough to penetrate the darkness far.


    “What are those for?” she asked.


    “Lightning catchers,” said Gwydion, the enchantments of the skimmer reducing the cacophony of the storm to a manageable din. “Without them, lightning would continually strike us, and the skimmer. Even this far from the eye, the power of the strike is silver rank. I could manage, for a while, but the storm is unrelenting, and my resources are not infinite.”


    Her next thought brought out a chuckle: “And I can dodge rocks, but not lightning.”


    “Try not to leave my side,” was all Gwydion said.


    Lightning instead of rain rained down from the black sky. Every so often, a crack of lightning made true of its threat, striking against the barrier of the skimmer in a flash of sheer power. It shuddered and hummed, supports creaking under some great weight, but the lightning catchers attracted enough of the storm’s attention that the barrier held, dissipating the energy of the strikes.


    A chill shuddered up her spine, raising gooseflesh along her arms. The void was unnerving, and Nara couldn’t help the anxiety that pulsed through her blood. She was to deliver a message to the Undeath priest—why her? Knowledge had not said, but she had delivered on her promise, the Gate, and Nara would complete hers.


    *****


    Duscha waited impatiently within the storm, his disposition just as stormy as the weather, his ghostshade cloak moving heedless of the wind, ethereal against the savagery of the storm. His pallor of gray matched the monotone of the storm, all color leeched for black and white. The black pikes stabbed into the ground attracted the lightning around him, sparing him from their wrath.


    His god had commanded him to wait here, for the cursed priest of Knowledge. He’d hear a mutually beneficial message, the other knowledge priest had said.


    He scoffed. Mutually beneficial? No, Knowledge would benefit the most. He would be more than happy to strike down her pawn, strike down life, to rot the divinity of knowledge that tainted its flesh. Duscha was of two minds: would he grant the body the divine touch of his lord Undeath, to make use of all death for his will? Or would such an offering be an affront to his lord, his blessings tainted by the flesh which had contained a more impure divinity?


    The idea of serving as a pawn of Knowledge filled Duscha with an all-consuming rage. How dare she play her games with him? She was secretive, manipulative, and impure, her authority weak. Her priests were sheep who could not think for themselves, and she thought herself some sort of shepherd, a mastermind that she was not. For all her knowledge, she could only beguile and beg, whisper and nudge, treat and backstab. Her expansive forces only accentuated her weakness, for she needed them all to accomplish anything at all.


    Unlike his lord, whose purpose was absolute, superior to all gods; he was the one who surpassed the cycle, rather than a pathetic slave to the forces of the cosmos. Undeath broke all regulations. Surpassed the unsurpassable. The forbidden and heretical was arbitrary, rules imposed upon the world to establish a false order of power. With Undeath, the strong ruled.


    Undeath was true evolution. Undeath was ascension, to discard the weak mortal flesh.


    Duscha’s dark vision allowed him to see his visitors—two—before they sensed him. A young human woman and an older elf man, bronze rank and silver rank respectively. The bronze ranker posed no threat to him. He sensed the divinity of the elf, the claiming corruption of Knowledge clear to Duscha.


    He flickered his aura over the bronze ranker’s with a cursory glance, then surprised himself with his inability to find anything at all. She looked human, and she was bronze rank. Rank was the most difficult quality of aura to hide. One could paint stone to resemble wood, yet upon touch the grains of wood would be missed for the rough coolness of stone. She was human…wasn’t she? And her aura, surely, the bronze rank was not another mask?


    He shook his head, clearing his own unease. She was just a bronze ranker, a scout perhaps. Hardly unusual. Knowledge and her spies, he should not be surprised she favored those.


    “Well?” he sneered impatiently, “Deliver your message so we may be on our way.” He didn’t want to be near these pawns for any longer than he should have to. He felt diminished by association.


    “I’m Nara,” the woman said simply. “And you are?”


    “You are too lowly to deserve my name.”


    “He’s Duscha,” the Knowledge priest said simply, no doubt to flaunt the petty power of his goddess.


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    “Clearly the…man just wants to be called ‘zombie’ the whole time. Or ‘you’.”


    “He’s a revenant,” the Knowledge priest once again, unhelpfully supplied. Duscha felt his anger spiking, his sharpened teeth pricking in his mouth in frustration.


    “Right. Duscha. I’m not entirely sure what Knowledge wants me to say, it’s not like she told me anything, but I was, er, a visitor to the Advent home world recently.”


    Gods. She didn’t even know? How incompetent.


    “I found some stuff out there,” she continued, heedless of his growing irritation, “but I think what Knowledge cares about is that there um, are no gods in their society.”


    That drew his attention.


    “I mean, there are gods, but the entire world has been claimed as the domain of this false-god called Harmony. Gods have no priests and no domains. They exist, and nothing else.”


    Duscha could see the manipulation of Knowledge, here hand in this. She wanted to disrupt their alliance with The Advent. Mutually beneficial, he scoffed. It was never that simple, with Knowledge.


    “And you have proof of this? These outrageous claims? I am to believe you by your words and only your words, this sabotage you seek to accomplish?” He crossed his arms, and sneered over her, imposing. “Just your words and nothing else? Surely, Knowledge could have chosen better?”


    She froze, not in fear, uncowed by him, but in realization. Her eyes sought his, but she would only find death light, void of sympathy. His jaw clenched. This had been a waste of time. Another one of Knowledge’s games, another pathetic bid to change the odds.


    “Of course,” she breathed out, too quiet to hear by normal senses.


    She materialized a chair, and sat upon in. The Knowledge Priest’s barrier hung over their heads, sheltering them from wind and rains.


    She, inexplicably, conjured a lute.


    “Have you heard of Soul Communion?” she began. “It is a method of communication between two souls as equals. No matter your view of our roles in life, the masters we serve, be it gods, wealth, the people, or society, within when we speak as souls, we speak as equals.


    There can be no deceit, no lies, no force. You cannot be forced to stay or leave. A ground of neutrality. If you consent, I can show you what I saw, as truth. Perhaps, from it, you’d glean more from my memories, see what I cannot see, and gain more than Knowledge had wanted you to gain.”


    He was doubtful, of course. He eyed the Knowledge priest. She saw his gaze, and something about her knowing smirk curdled his blood.


    “What? Afraid of death?”


    His eyes flashed. He had his own inventory—much of undeath ritual magic required extensive external components—and removed his own chair from within it.


    “Very well,” he sneered. “I will serve as the ears of my god.”


    If this was Knowledge’s plan, she and her priest would stay their hand; in the games of a god, a silver ranker was inconsequential. What mattered was what happened after the message had been delivered. Would he outlive his usefulness, or would they?


    His hand shall be the one to deliver death.


    *****


    A messenger. A mediator. A path seeker.


    Music wove through her fingertips, twirling around her and the undeath priest in a strange, sonorous duo. She felt his consent, wary and untrusting as it was.


    She closed her eyes.


    When they next opened, she saw his soul.


    It was unpleasant, in the way that rotted food was unpleasant, that the mere mention of carcinogens made others cringe. It was suffused with the sensation of unnaturalness, of formaldehyde preserving a facsimile of life against the entropy of death. The aura of Undeath permeated it, welcomed into its deepest depths, coloring it like dye to cloth.


    She would not say it was evil: Preservatives were not evil, nor were pesticides. But Nara had long sense been disabused of such a simple notion of good and evil, aware that even her own values of liberty were at the cost of safety. What was right and what was wrong? Was the preservation of lives the most important value, or were other ideals more sacrosanct?


    She did sense his wrath, which echoed in his nature—Revenant. He was transformed into what he once was, a rage over divinity (a specific goddess) in life transforming him in undeath. His resentment was deep, bubbling up from an infinite well that colored all aspects of his soul. Perhaps, the victim of an ‘acceptable loss’ in one of Knowledge’s calculations.


    A pawn did not much like to be sacrificed, even for victory.


    It was only speculation. She could look no further into the man’s soul than what lay on top. Wrath, resentment, Undeath, and a fear of his own insignificance. To be a pawn once again, in the games of gods. He feared it, even now.


    The attention of his soul met hers, and she wondered what he saw with his senses. Less, perhaps. Subconsciously, she knew she posed stronger defenses against observation. It may be her strength of aura, her repeated resistance against intrusions, or her claiming of herself as her own territory.


    “Shall we begin?” she offered. She had no desire to spend much time with this man, in touching distance of his soul. Neither did he with her.


    “Do as you are bid, messenger,” he said, dismissing and scathing. She could sense Undeath watching, a presence to his priest. The message was for him, and not for the priest.


    She did not show him everything, just two main meetings: The witnessing of Harmony, and the visitation of Knowledge. She ended the sharing before her discussion with Knowledge about her world, and the gift he gave to her.


    The priest took a long moment to collect himself, mulling over what he had witness.


    “Do not think I do not understand your purpose,” he said bitingly, “what Knowledge hopes to accomplish with this message. It will not turn out as you expect.” He did not share any further thoughts, and she sensed his intention to leave the soulscape.


    Closing her internal eyes, Nara ended the communion.


    *****


    She was too slow. She had not realized.


    And yet, there would not have been an alternative any other way.


    Nara had left the soulscape at the same time as Ducha, but as he was the higher rank, he had a faster reaction and recovery speed. The moment they left soul communion, he attacked. And, as they sat across one another so nearby, Nara had no time to dodge.


    She had claimed that soul communion allowed them to communicate as equals; a lesson learned that this equality did not apply to the physical plane.


    The great sword through where her heart should have been told her as much. Afflictions flickered across her Guide, the ones attempted to warp her flesh into undeath resisted, although the ones that simply rotted it passed through, silver rank against bronze resistances, tyrannical in origin and effect. Each second the weapon impaled in her body dragged her closer to her doom, blade spreading afflictions like industrial waste dumping.


    And here she thought the undead were supposed to be necromancers. Duscha was decidedly a warrior type.


    Her awareness flickered back, the Knowledge priest standing guardedly, but made no move to help.


    “Why?” she croaked.


    His eyes were sympathetic but unmoved; she did not know if it was much of a reassurance against the encroachment of death. Her breath would stutter and catch in her chest, had there been any lungs to falter, any heart to fail.


    The Undeath priest had thought she was referring to him. He sneered, face far too close for her final moments on Erras, one she would’ve preferred to spend watching the eerie beauty of the storm than smelling his rotten breath.


    “I will not be a pawn of knowledge,” he hissed. “Whatever games she plays with you…whatever you are—” his eyes were wild, somewhere behind the death light was fear, “—I will end it here.” He looked up at the knowledge priest and bared his teeth, sharpened and blackened.


    Options ran through Nara’s mind, discarded quickly. Luckily, the Undeath’s priest’s attention was drawn away from her, turned towards his second, more threatening opponent.


    The first, most obvious option—astral jumping into her astral domain. She tried, but she had never been able to shift outside of the most favorable of circumstances, and impaled with a sword and dripping—oh, would you look at that—black blood was not the ideal headspace to attempt the delicate negotiation of shifting into a realm that did not welcome reality.


    Even if she could, her next best options were nixed by the Inescapable affliction that was the bane of her existence. It was, unfortunately, rather common, especially with affliction specialists like the legions of Undeath.


    If that was the issue, she needed to deal with the sword. She made a move to attempt to yank the sword out of her chest, arms trembling as she reached up to try to gain enough leverage to pull it out. It was, doubly unfortunate, extremely heavy, and the length of the blade meant she’d need to pull it several times to yank the blade through. Of course, he couldn’t just be a warrior priest, but a heavy weapon wielder as well.


    One. The blade slid a few inches, grotesque metal shifting against broken ribs. Her mind swam with the pain, and her life force was fading fast. She burned mana with Refresh, hoping it’d be enough to get the blade through. Then, she could use a cleansing potion, wipe away whatever she could with Boon Conversion, and hope that it was enough.


    Two. Having no heart and no lungs had saved her again, for she would not be able to take a single breath through the pain.


    Three. She distantly wondered if she looked like some sort of grotesque statue, a woman kneeling on the ground, blade through her chest, blood pooling around her. Yup, if she should die, she should at least look like a piece of art. A tragic statue within an unending storm. How poetic.


    There was no more handle to reach for, only blade to grasp. She curled up her legs, stiff from a Rigor Mortis affliction, and placed them on the guard of the great sword.


    Four. Her legs made more progress than her hands. Perhaps, she should have started with this. She heard a clash behind her, Gwydion’s blue barriers rendered in monochrome as he blocked Ducha’s sword. It would be quite the epic battle she’d like to appreciate, with a background of storm and lightning and a high contrast greyscale, like some final stand in a black and white action movie, if she wasn’t dying on the ground.


    She supposed she’d appreciate it anyway. Final moments and all that.


    Five. The blade finally slipped free of her body (although slipped was too easy of a description), spilling with a gurgle of black, running faster without the blockage. Her vestiges of mental willpower, struggling against the burden of Spirit reducing afflictions, managed to summon a cleansing potion from her inventory. Her arms shook as she popped the stopper and drained it as best she could.


    -------


    -You have consumed [Cleansing Potion (Silver)].


    -Consuming a higher ranked potion has increased potion cooldown. Consuming another potion before the end of the cooldown period will trigger potion reflux.


    -------


    Rats. That hadn’t cleansed the Inescapable. Burning mana through Refresh had at least the side-effect of generating boons, both through Refresh and through Astral Blessing. It wasn’t all peas and carrots, as the silver rank undeath priest had another nasty affliction that caused his afflictions to resist cleansing.


    She kept at it, eyes burning with focus. It was almost worse, having nothing else to do but waiting for the result of the race—would the afflictions kill her first, or would be manage to cleanse Inescapable and escape before the end?


    “No!” a deep and resentful voice seethed, “You shall not escape!”


    The undeath priest moved faster than Nara’s addled mind could process, great sword already swinging down like a guillotine. She could only eye it, helplessly, as the seconds of her life stretched despite its sheer speed, the last gasps of her life clinging to reality.


    A gold form materialized above her, crossed golden blades briefly redirecting the strike towards the ground. Easily, the priest shifted its momentum, blade arcing for a second, damning swing. How such a putrid blade, strung with globules of dark flesh and veined in sickly violet, managed to cut through air with such aerodynamic speed was beyond physics.


    The blade crashed down again, and this time Chrome could not stop it. It ruthlessly shattered his sword, shards of gold light the hue of a graveyard of color, then bit into Chrome, red and purple tainting his pristine light.


    “Chrome!” she cough-shouted, still weak. Her eyes watered, despite knowing she’d see him again. He flashed her something—a smile—then shot a look at the Knowledge priest.


    “There is meaning in action,” he said, gaze of gold not looking at the Knowledge priest, but at the being beyond him. “Indifference will not reap your desired rewards.”


    The sword swung for the last time. Nara did not know whether she or Chrome died first.