Dare to Accomplish Wonders [Isekai Quest] <Birdsie Quest>

[Birdsie]

Chapter 9: My Reflection

###
24th of Goldleaf, 1310​

Over the next few nights, Lazara was visited by dreams of a strange world. Lily. Home. Past.
A lighthouse towered above a city.
A nebulous world.
An experiment providing light to others. Natural.
An indescribable world.
A star-sequined sky reflected in an endless watery surface.
A vaguer world, there has never been.
My home.
And yet, Lazara understood.
My reflection.
And then she didn't.

Lazara's eyes opened at once. The moment her consciousness returned, she let out a massive groan and clenched her fists, throwing the bedsheets off with her feet.

She really wanted to punch something, but when she looked at the items in the room - the wall, window, cupboards, nightstand - everything seemed too sturdy to damage. She hit the bed with the bottom of her right fist, but it yielded too elastically to her blow. Unsatisfying.

Lazara stood up groggily and began to wash her face in the basin.

She'd been this close to clarity; a hair's width away from the goal, before the promised understanding slipped away from her grasp, evading her once again. A futile repeat of the exercise she'd been practicing ever since she realized she was reincarnated. Belladonna helped her put together the meditative logic - to draw understanding from dreams, communicate with one's soul, one's past, and one's deeper self. A way to see memories of her previous life.

She blinked the water out of her eyes, then began to wash her hair. Once she was done, a wind spell would suffice to dry it.

Lazara thought her soul might be eager to share the facts, but that was far from the truth. Either she lacked the aptitude for doing it correctly or was doing the wrong thing. Meditate instead of sleep? She wasn't a prophet, but her light had some ill-defined leanings towards divination. Far from clairvoyance or precognition, but maybe some clarity could be leveraged... with effort.

Lazara looked up at her reflection and blinked in surprise, then shook off the illusion and walked to the bathroom.

For a moment, she'd thought she saw someone else in the mirror - a kindly, older woman - but it must have been a trick of the light.

Why had her soul refused to speak to her?

###​

​

Following breakfast, which had been mostly silent, a butler approached Lazara. Timory stopped to look, but then shrugged and left to go do his magic training. "M'lady."

"Yes?" She looked at the butler. What was his name? It wasn't a funny one, like Sebastian or Alfred. Malvius? No, wait, that's the gardener. This one is... "Eliott?"

He nodded in confirmation, then extended his gloved hand. "This came for you via carrier pigeon this morning," he said. Lazara took and examined the letter.

It was a simple white paper envelope, but her hands told her more. The paper was a perfect, matte white. It was sturdy - the kind that didn't tear easily and took too long to burn. More importantly, it had a golden wax seal on it, with a symbol of ten circles joined together in a ring, with lines connecting them to a crown in the center.

"Thank you," she said, looking up at the butler with a smile. He nodded, and she walked off to her study.

She came through the door, looked right and left to confirm no one was following her, then closed it. Just to be safe, she put on her glasses and scanned the room and the general area. The maids were busy chatting as they cleaned up the breakfast table and prepared to partake themselves, the butlers were standing by the wayside and chatting, the valet was... preparing clothes for father to wear, it looked like; the guards were guarding, and the cooks were cooking.

Clear.

Lazara took the glasses off, sat down in her desk, then tore the envelope open and took it out to read.

The paper within was sturdy parchment: the sort of parchment, that when exposed to rain, wouldn't be affected in the slightest. The text was clear and written in some kind of strange ink - gold, with a blue outline. What kind of quill writes like that? Must be magical.

Lazara began to read the letter.

She almost dropped it in shock.

Lazara blinked and read again.

Dear Lady Lightbrook,

I didn't know you have a crush on me. It's rather inappropriate, given that you're a full three years older than me. You wouldn't happen to be a pedophile, would you? I digress.

I write to you regarding the letter you've sent to my subordinates in a very poor attempt to slip it past my notice. I might be of a young age, but I am not stupid, my fair Lady. I know what happens in the basilica and I know what happens in the capital. The postal services responsible for directing carrier pigeons are most helpful when their pockets are sprinkled with coin.

If you would lean towards accepting advice, from one youthful schemer to another: Next time, try enchanted pigeons directed at whomever you want to contact, and make sure they don't serve or answer to the person you're contacting them about. Or hire a messenger. Should either option prove distasteful or dangerous, hire a mercenary, adventurer, et cetera; their types are eager for work and surely your treasury is far from empty, given your considerable standing.

As to actually answer the question contained within your letter, my appointment has caused distress and varying levels of groaning among the members of the Church of Ten, and its subsidiaries: especially the cardinals, with whom I have taken great joy in annoying to no end.

It brings me delight to annoy them on purpose, for reasons I frankly cannot fathom. There is something primally satisfying: a form of vindictive glee, in sticking it to the man.

Especially when 'the man' is a group of thousand-year-old chair-farting clowns whose only real aim is to bend over and pray every evening. When was the last time one of them got up and slew a greater daemon or something? I realize that statement may be hypocritical, but I am only eight and am getting ready for greater things as it is.

As for the common populace, it appears that opinions are torn up, but I am not certain of the exact statistics. To my best approximation, half of the people are in love with me, and the other half would see me burn in agonizing pain at a stake for witchcraft, heresy, lèse-majesté, demoralization, and likely other offenses or misdemeanors that I am not aware of.

I will consider marriage no earlier than a decade from now, but I may be convinced otherwise if your father is willing to grant me the right of dowry.

Write back at your leisure.

With a raised eyebrow,

Pope of the Ten Divines, His Excellency, Regulator of Cosmic Balance, Defender of Mortalkind, Guardian of Gates Most Conflicted, Keeper of Harvests, Controller of Forges, Ambassador to Dragonkind, Enlightened Sage Equal To Heaven, Dweller Among The Finest Thrones, Merciful Considerator, Holder of the Scales, Speaker of Archaic Bullshit, et cetera, et cetera......

Theomach Claudius Pallas Julius Alcendence​

Lazara stared, long and hard.

What just happened?

###​

That afternoon.

"How many meridians do you have?"

"Six," Timory replied, sword and shield raised high. The shield covered most of his torso to provide a good defense, even with his armor on and his helmet's visor clasped closed.

There was the matter of the communication mirror. Lazara attempted to convince him to wear it on a chain at his belt, but he insisted it was too fragile and would break easily during combat.

Instead, she and Belladonna managed to work a sort of glassy visor behind the actual visor in his helmet. It was fully transparent when inactive, and the opacity of the other side was low even when activated, though he required a small opening for his mouth to be added as breathing would become too difficult with the glass.

"Interesting," Belladonna said.

She moved a few paces back and nodded to Matrim, who raised his sword in a defensive stance. He was instructed not to chuck rocks, sand, or anything else that wouldn't be done by a typical elven soldier on the battlefield.

The spar began.

Timory closed the distance of twenty meters in four seconds from a standstill. Lazara felt the wind whooshing her hair in his wake, even though she stood quite a distance away.

His heels scraped against the earth as he halted in a drift. He swung his blade.

Matrim leaned back, and the tip only barely scraped the surface of his armor, before he stepped forward. Matrim raised his own sword and lowered it.

Timory lifted his shield in response, but Matrim changed directions in the last second. A feint.

It wasn't enough; Timory adapted his defense.

The shield changed directions as Timory stepped back, then circled around, and leaned his entire body left to avoid a follow-up attack - he looked like he was about to fall over, but kept moving, teetering at the edge of balance.

The response came at a very obtuse angle and Matrim was hit in the side of the torso, just as Timory shifted his balance again, to the earth. His back hit the ground and he rolled backwards, while Matrim nursed his wound.

Matrim frowned, while Belladonna whistled appreciatively.

"You should have followed it up," Matrim stated bluntly, but not coldly. "I was open."

"I would have," Timory answered. "What I did was more difficult, instead."

Matrim grinned, then let out a burst of roaring laughter from the depths of his throat. He looked at Timory with bright eyes, almost glistening with enthusiasm. "You were just playing around with me, weren't you?"

Timory's face was difficult to see through his helmet, but the smile was obvious. "Yeah."

"Let's do this right and proper, then," Matrim said, a growl of determination inflecting his voice. "Second round. What do you say?"

"I'm down. Second round," Timory repeated with a nod, then assumed some sort of charging stance - shield lifted at an upwards angle, but held low; sword at medium height, held back but pointed forward. Like a spring; a viper, ready to thrust its body in a bite. His feet were wide apart, but close enough that he could maintain the stance without losing too much stamina, and start running without too much delay.

Belladonna nodded to them both, then said, "Begin!"

This time, Matrim was the one who ran first. Sword only, no shield, body pitched forward.

Timory seemed to take that as a challenge and he charged in response, lifting his shield a little bit forward to cover his face and putting as much strength into his sword-arm as possible.

Matrim took advantage of that, jumping over a meter into the air and onto Timory's shield, using the momentum to his advantage.

Instead of clumsily slipping off, falling, or causing Timory to stumble, Matrim jumped even higher off of it, like a cinematic spring, up into the air. He did a somersault - kicking Timory in the back of the head to stun him - then landed behind him.

Matrim spun around, sword swinging.

Timory, instead of turning to be hit in the face, took advantage of his stumble and allowed himself to fall prone.

Once Matrim's swing reached its zenith, Timory rolled onto his back and bounced upwards, blade moving in a stab.

Matrim deflected it, then stepped back, breathing. "Ha-haa! That's brilliant, lad! How long could you keep this up?"

"This? A few minutes."

Matrim didn't frown, but his next statement had a hint of displeasure in it. "Train to get it up higher."

The old warrior dropped his stance, and Timory followed, lowering his armaments. Matrim continued to elaborate, "Short battles. Battles like this - between five or ten people. That's what you're good for, right now, if you learn to distribute your energy evenly. But a war? The battles you'll be fighting, lad - they're arduous contests of stamina and power for all combatants involved. They might last hours, and so will you. If you run out of juice a few minutes into the actual fight, you'll be useless."

Timory nodded, then had Sylvester move and help him out of his armor. Once he was done, Lazara approached to speak with him.

"That was awesome, Tim!" she chirped. Her gaze lowered into a drawn expression. She looked him in the eyes. "But... Matrim's right, you know? You gotta train more. I want you to join my combat lessons. We could learn together, before you have to go."

He looked down and smiled. "I will."

###​

That evening...

"Either you're fretting, or you're under attack. Please tell me what's going on and why you're taking pills, because if you don't I'm going to need to check you and everything you touch for tampering."

Her father blinked once. Then twice.

"I'm taking alchemical pills to replace sleep because I have been working overtime," he explained. He definitely wasn't expecting that to come out when she stopped him in the hallway.

He hesitated to speak further. He actually shuffled his feet, shifting. It looked almost childish, but he was too old and the beard ruined the image.

"Daevina has... your mother, told me about your... circumstances, Lazara. I've been worried, so at night; me, Sylvester, and some priests from the local congregation have been doing rounds and placing blessings around the grounds. I am doing most of the work, since I can imbue the earth with protective light, but they're helping. Not just here, either, but also in the town. Around the province. I've been working out patches in our security, too."

"Really?" Lazara asked. She wasn't doubtful but surprised at her father's dedication.

"Lazara, dear." He knelt, his face growing bitter and guilty.

He looked into her eyes for a long, long moment.

She was taken by surprise when he hugged her. She didn't resist the hug, but she was too surprised to reciprocate fully.

He continued to speak in a hushed voice, "I know I haven't shown it much over the years. I've been a bad father; too preoccupied with other things, with looking regal... but I love you. You're my daughter, and I love you, and I don't want you to ever forget that, okay?..."

He breathed in through his nose, with a sound that indicated it was runny.

"And after what you told your mother, I was scared..." He shook his head. "I still am - we're both scared. We're making preparations for whatever it is you're afraid of."

"You believe me?" she asked, doubtful in retrospect.

She felt him nod.

He didn't explain that he believed she had visions. Or ask her for confirmation. There was no doubt.

He just nodded. He just believed her.
No.
Lazara tried to keep the dumb smile off her face, but she couldn't. Her eyes were glassy and wet, and yet she was so comfortable. She leaned into her father, wrapping her hands around his back and letting her eyes close.
Enough of this....
The moment lasted for a while longer.
Death to all of you.
Finally, they parted and looked into each other's eyes, both smiling.
Hollow. Destroy the child.
Her father rose suddenly, his eyes going empty as he looked forward. All expression was void from his face, as if he was gone. Lazara was surprised by the sudden change of behavior. He either really was tired or... Lazara began to move back slowly, but he didn't react in any way.

She took that as permission to leave and began to speed up, but kept her eyes fixed on where he stood. This was creepy.

For a moment, Lazara hesitated, stopping in the middle of the hallway. "Dad? A-are you okay?"

She gasped when he lifted a hand at her, his eyes changing. Patterns of light danced in his irises, white crisscrossing filaments in various arrangements, shifting and moving constantly; angular, rather than curving. His palm began to glow, and light everywhere else dimmed. A small orb of light formed in his hand and kept growing to the size of a peanut.

For some reason, she instinctively understood the technique, for all its similarity to her own magic. He was taking light in the area and charging it into his hand, to save energy on evoking light out of nowhere by himself.

Lazara felt like a deer in the headlights. "Dad? Dad, you're scaring me. What are you-"

The light in his palm bulged into the size of a lemon, and he must have deemed that satisfactory because he shifted it to take aim. His white, hollow eyes stared at her, promising death.

Act.
[] Panic.
[] Panic.
[] Panic.
[] Scream.
[] Panic.
[] Run.
[] Write-in.
[] Scream.

###

Savior Panel
"What do chess-players call this situation? Ah! Check..."​

It's 24th Goldleaf, 1310, in the late evening, roughly 19:30.

Your father has gotten emotional and vulnerable, and unlike your mother, he is tired physically and mentally. Wards and abjurations or not, the Adversary decided to come knocking when the opportunity showed itself.

Your father is currently under the effect of a very powerful pseudo-magical effect. Although supernatural in origin, it is not strictly "a spell," being a magical effect that is "one step above" that. Lesser forms of dispelling will not work, and strong anti-magic will be required to get rid of the effect. Simple one-word repelling charms and exorcisms will not work - he must be bound and then undergo extensive procedure for Adversary to be dispelled. Additionally, Pholion Lightbrook will not feel pain, will not be anywhere near as shocked/stunned/dazed by injury as he should be, and cannot be knocked unconscious by ordinary methods - Adversary will just force his brain to reset to working order if that happens.

Appealing to his emotions is unlikely to work, but feel free to convince me otherwise.

All of the servants are busy downstairs, making clean-up work. The chef or some cooks may be present in the kitchen, but what can they really do to help you? Timory, as far as you know, should be in his room, or training in the courtyard - a gamble to try to find him. Belladonna is either in her room or in the workshop. Matrim is likely in his room on the third floor. You have no idea where Snake is; likely slithering around somewhere. The last time you saw Sylvester, he was leaving the mansion, so he's either in town, or somewhere outside.

Warning: It is unadvised to "just run," as your father is all but 2.4 seconds away from firing a concentrated blast of light at you. That's impossible to dodge, and has enough power to cause 4th-degree burns and kinetic damage equivalent to a very strong punch - if aimed well-enough, it can have lethal consequences.

You are eleven-years-old, so physical action (wrestling with your papa,) is unlikely to yield results and will likely result in having your neck snapped by Adversary.

As far as offensive spells go, you can mimic his "steal light and fire it in a blast," schtick, focus it into rays and lasers that can blind people or imbue the light with "hardness" to allow it to deal kinetic and thermal damage. You can also choose any color of the rainbow, such as blue or red, and "attach" an elemental payload to it. For example, red light is an excellent carrier for the fire element, while blue is better suited for water or wind. Your Enlightening Glasses are currently in the right breast pocket of your dress. If you don't want to wait for light to draw into your hand, you can also generate it from nowhere, but that costs considerably more energy.

If it's any consolation, the blast will produce a sound equivalent to a bottle cap being popped off. If someone overhears it, they might investigate.

Currently, you are on the second floor of the mansion. Here is a roughly-drawn (very roughly-drawn; there may be some slight inaccuracies due to brevity/me being too lazy to draw,) map: (Blue dot = Lazara, Red dot = Pholion Lightbrook The Adversary)

Spoiler

No supplementary actions are allowed until the current conflict is resolved.

Feel free to ask questions.

 

[Birdsie]

Chapter 10: Smoke and Mirrors

###​

Lazara froze in her spot.

In a flash - literal and figurative - her life could be over.

Fear gripped at her heart, even as adrenaline began to course through her veins, going into her brain and encoding it with the primal fear of death. She was never this afraid in her life. Every part of her told her to run, or scream in some fatuous hope that someone would save her; every part save one.

Reflect.

"I am the mirror; your light is my light!" she screamed out, face still contorted in terror, scattering two lungfuls of air in a hasty panic. She didn't know where the incantation came from. She just knew what to say in that moment, like there was a nebulous voice in her soul whispering what to do.

Guide.

She felt space twist. With her enhanced sight, she espied a slight distortion in the air. Translucent, shaped like a panel.

Father-- no. No, not her father. Her Adversary watched her impassively and fired the photon missile, not having enough time himself to react to her spell. The time gap was too small for even him to process that.

To her surprise, the shield reflected the light, but not in the way she'd aimed for. Instead of deflecting it at an angle, like a ball might bounce off a wall, it was more like someone threw a water balloon at a hard surface and the water exploded away from the point of impact, in the opposite direction.

The light scattered everywhere, strands and lasers; the whiteness was lost as it became less of a stable emission and more of an ambient mist that lasted for less than an eyeblink. There was a loud bang - not as loud as to be deafening; not an explosion, but loud nonetheless. Like a cask of wine being popped open with a forceful pull.

The shield collapsed.

Lazara took a good look at the hallway. The walls and floors were discolored; there was a cone of charred flooring spreading outwards in her father's direction where the shield would have been. Everything else was only lightly darkened and had pinprick holes in them. A foul smell filled the air: that of carpentry and acrid ammonia.

Her father was bleeding, as small holes freckled his garb; red color staining his skin and clothing. None got his eyes, which were staring her down hatefully, but his face had a smattering of crimson points on it, tinier lines of red flowing from them slowly.

The shield definitely didn't react how she'd expected it to, but there wasn't time to deliberate on that.

She got up from where she fell on the ground - only now actually noticing she fell. She stumbled as she moved back, chanting again, "My light is my own; my absence is shadow!"

Another improvised incantation, but it worked. Barely. She could almost feel her soul hesitate to go through with her intent; probably because she wasn't as scared anymore, just in shock.

The hallway darkened to pitch, the flow of light from the windows and lamps disappearing. And yet, she heard the footsteps behind her.

Lazara didn't look back; she saw along the walls and floor as they lit up with a dim white glow. Light from behind her.

She rapidly used the same incantation from earlier to make a shield, but it was weaker than her previous one, and Adversary fired this missile sooner.

Both the attack and the defense were weaker, but she felt the shield crack and some heat sear her back. Lazara shrieked and turned the corner.

"HELP!" she screamed, and made a tentative look back. Adversary was running after her, just having turned the corner. He lifted his arm and charged a missile for barely half a second before firing it off. Lazara didn't have time to make a shield, but the running made his aim faulty and he hit the floor in front of her.

She entered her room and slammed the door shut with a bang. She moved to barricade it with a wardrobe, but was too weak, grunting with each move of her feet even though the wardrobe adamantly refused to move from where it was rooted to the floor.

"Wind, answer my plea and grant me dominion!" she said, quickly but coherently. The wardrobe yielded to her advance and moved into place just in time for her to feel the door hit its back.

Lazara ran to the bathroom, closed the door and locked it, then put on her Enlightening Glasses. She could still hear the thumping on the door for a few seconds, before it stopped.

She focused on the glasses, on her vision, and saw her father highlighted in red, through the walls.

He moved back, away from her room, all the way to the opposite wall in the hallway. He raised his hand and splayed his fingers. Lazara's eyes widened in realization, as she moved closer to the bathroom entrance in Timory's room - who wasn't present there, of all the damn times he could have made himself useful.

Not three seconds passed before she heard the sound of a bottle cap being popped off, followed by the distinctive creaking of wood being demolished and splintered. These sounds were followed by a foul curse in an unknown language and another similar set of popping sounds. After that, the door to her room, as well as the wardrobe, fell down with a thundering thud and a crack.

She quietly retreated to her brother's room, while Adversary - instead of checking under her bed - charged up a massive bolt of light, far bigger than any so far, and literally fried it. She could smell the smoke from here, alongside another loud bang; this one closer to gunpowder exploding than a bottle cap.

She re-aligned her lenses to look at her bed and saw it was in shambles. Just wood and cloth, burning up in a massive pile of fire, which was spreading faster than fire should have.

Adversary made several motions, causing the rubble to fall apart with a telekinetic division, and he scowled with a sneer when he saw her corpse wasn't there.

He headed for the bathroom, while she quietly slinked out of Timory's room, and was back in the hallway.

Lazara took off her glasses and looked to her right; the door to her room was demolished and laid on the ground, inside. It had a large hole in it, spreading to a smaller hole in the back of her wardrobe, where some of the clothes were on fire. Apparently, this was the result of his initial strike, and then he decided to take out the hinges with two, less powerful but more precise blasts, with a final, explosive blast to push everything inwards.

She gulped, her heart racing as she began to get her thoughts in order.

He was being possessed, so she had to find Sylvester. He was the priority.

Lazara put on her Enlightening Glasses again. She was expecting her father was about to blow up Timory's bed, so she stole a glance behind her; almost having a heart attack. Her father stood behind the door, just a meter away from her, grinning sadistically and looking straight at her.

Before she could react, the door was blasted off and she was thrown into the opposite wall. The door smashed into her face and nose foremost; it wasn't as painful as she expected, but it filled the space behind her nose with a kind of... raw feeling, for a lack of a better term. She supposed it must have been the sensation of crushed arteries and internal bleeding.

Thankfully, her glasses weren't damaged, having been constructed too sturdily, but they clattered to the ground.

Lazara screamed in pain as she fell to the ground (or rather, the door below her,) and looked up, using her elbows and knees for support.

The Adversary stood there, in the doorway. A coruscant aura of light danced in the eyes of his vessel, and spread out in thin lines onto his cheeks and body, healing the wounds she'd created by deflecting his own light at him. His grin was like a wild animal, and he sauntered out of Timory's room, his arms flowing with swagger.

Lazara grunted, more in anger than pain or fear this time. She forced herself to stand, snatching her glasses as she ran downstairs with all the speed her legs offered her. She was followed down by a pair of light bolts, one grazing her buttocks, the other missing and hitting the stairs.

In fact, she didn't bother with the fucking stairs, leaping over the balustrade and aiming for the couch in the small alcove-like parlor in the entrance hall.

Lazara landed on it with most of her body, albeit rather painfully; only her right side and head sticking over the edge.

Also, to the surprise of the butler who was having tea and crumpets on a couch opposite of the one she landed on. She didn't wait, didn't explain, just rolled off the bed, yelling, "GO FIND SYLVESTER! DAD'S POSSESSED!"

The butler was confused, standing up. He looked like he was about to ask questions, but Lazara got up from the ground and ran for the doors, which were damnably closed.

She didn't notice or project the fact that Adversary was standing on the stairs, with his hand aimed at the very doors she was moving towards, already having amassed a considerable amount of light.

Lazara reached for the handle with her hand, and then flinched when she heard the discharge. Almost instinctively, a shield formed around her. Too little, too weak.

Her world became pain.

Everything was pain.

There were no more concerns about the Adversary chasing her, or about finding Sylvester. Only pain, as she was on fire and in pain. Pain and agony. Pain and anguish.

If pain were to be compared to some kind of liquid, then what just happened was that someone took a high-pressure hose and washed her down with it, and not deeming it satisfactory, threw her into a vat full of it for a day or two, for her to get all wet.

Ringing in the ears, and vertigo were the least of her concerns. Between the pain and fear, she didn't know what happened to her body.

She was pretty sure she felt something scrape against her chest and her back a few times; felt her limbs moving due to some unknown and sudden force, but she had no idea where she was and why. Her brain could only think about pain, fear, and anger; hate for the thing that caused this.

Lazara opened her eyes and stood up, only to fall over again, but hold herself up with one hand. Every part of her body that was previously uncovered had bruises, burns, or lacerations, and much of her clothing was blackened and torn open.

She felt dizzy and couldn't get up, so she knelt instead for a moment. To breathe.

And then she threw up all over the floor and, partly, on her knees and chest.

Her heart was beating like it was about to fall out of her chest, and she felt sick in her stomach, like a demon was about to bust out of her gut.

She looked left and right to orientate herself and saw that she was outside, several steps outside the door. She was surrounded by rubble, some of it scorched, and broken remnants of the mansion's front door. The hedges around her were on fire, and the stairs leading up to the entrance were cracked.

Inside the mansion, in the parlor, Lazara saw Lord Lightbrook.

The glow on his body had already spread across his torso and was making progress up to his forearms. He stood over the burnt body of what she presumed was the butler previously, but was now a clump of charcoal in a vaguely humanoid shape, still burning. He gave the side of the corpse a light kick, then chuckled.

How the hell did I survive that? she asked herself.

The Adversary was occupied watching the butler's corpse burn, but she knew this wouldn't stay that way. Where were her glasses? The last time she saw them, they were in her hands, but she couldn't find them anywhere.

She heard a sound far away, metal on stone. Repetitive. Rhythmical, but fast. Armored feet? The guards?

Lazara felt the bile rise to the midsection of her throat before she forced it back down. She breathed for several long moments; long breaths, yet choppy and dull, through clenched teeth. She was afraid if she made a full, quick breath, she'd vomit or go into a coughing spree.

What now?

[] Write-in!

###

Savior Panel
"HAHAHAHAHA! This is so much fun! We should play cat and mouse more often..."​

It's 24th Goldleaf, 1310, in the late evening, roughly 19:33.

You are currently outside Lightbrook Manor, on the destroyed entrance, between the Manor and the main courtyard.

You are exhausted, scared, in shock, probably have a concussion, are bleeding, and you're suffering from massive vertigo; any attempts at standing up will automatically result in immediately falling over and possibly injuring yourself. If you want to move, crawling or the like is recommended, though it may cause further infections/wounding, especially now that you've puked all over yourself and have open bodily lacerations everywhere. You also have bruising and probably some extent of internal damage, but have no method of checking that; you're in too much pain to detect bruising by poking it, and don't have any devices to check out the inside of your body.

You would have been worse, mind you; not too indifferent from the butler, but you managed to manifest a reflective shield (one closer to the second one you cast, rather than the first,) in the last second through sheer fear and pain.

You have no idea how much it took for you to come to after his last attack, but I'll tell you it was less than a minute.

Adversary is currently occupied wrapping up the fun he had baking the innocent and elderly butler, and will likely turn his attention to finishing you off in seconds from now, after confirming he cannot consume souls on this sacred ground.

It is unfortunate that most of the downstairs staff heard that last explosion and are probably en route to see what the hell happened, as this means they are next on the frying list.

In the distance, you can hear the sound of armored feet running in your direction - the guards must have heard the commotion and are running in to help, but it's doubtful they'll make it in time, and if they do - can they really take on the Adversary? You do not see Timory, Belladonna, Matrim, or Sylvester anywhere, but that may be in part due to your impaired perception. Right now, your mind and perceptiveness are about as effective as those of a heavily drunk, concussed person, after all.

You cannot find your Enlightening Glasses anywhere.

You hear something rustling in the bushes behind you, maybe whispering. What could that be?

Quasi-accurate map:

Spoiler

Purple - Other locations.
Red star/oblong shapes - flames.
Red dot - Adversary/Pholion Lightbrook.
Blue dot - Savior/You, Lazara Lightbrook.
Yellowish dot covered in flames - recently deceased, elderly butler, Johann Aloisi, currently burning after a brief, but agonizing and merciless death.
Weird long creature, hissing at you from a bush. Is it saying something - ???

No supplementary actions can be taken right now.

 

[Birdsie]

Chapter 11: Savior, Art Thou Alive Still?

###​

Lazara's ears were ringing, and she felt dizzy just moving her head. Without blinking constantly, the world seemed to be a giant abstract painting built with smudges. The Adversary was still laughing over the butler's corpse. She didn't hear anything else, except some rustling, wind, the metallic footsteps far away, and...

Whispering; distant yet close, repetitive, rhythmical. The same, familiar, leveled pitch and timbre.

"...Ild... e... se..."

Not in my head? No. She approached one of the bushes, or rather, dragged her arms and neared it. She felt a pressure on her body slightly go away, which she now recognized as the ambient and searing sensation of heat.

Lazara took one look back and realized everything was on fire. She cursed, then finished the drag.

"Father is possessed," she spat out. Or at least, a sentence similar enough. Her mind felt like it was hit with a baseball bat, so it was hard to tell what she actually said. "Help."

She grabbed the snake near its head, uncaring of the possibility of being bit. Even if she was, it's not like the situation could get any worse.

The snake had very smooth scaling; she'd take a moment to appreciate it, were it not for the life-or-death situation. Its scales had white coloring, and its eyes were big, red orbs.

Teacher, it's you! She eagerly wrapped Snake-in-the-Reeds around her neck and felt a trickle of energy run through her spine. Instantly, her legs were taken away from her by someone else, and she began running forward, in the direction of the inner courtyard.

"We... ave... o... et... out of... ere..." she heard his intermittent words, more distinctly now.

She wanted to recite prayers. Maybe the Gods would help, but she couldn't remember any right now. It was hard to think, hard to remember.

Wait, I remember one!

For once, she felt thankful to Sylvester, for drilling this lesson into her brain.

She began to pray to the God of Protection, Order, and Safety, "Paladine, your faithful servant, begging for your attention in this time of need, asks you to give her a boon of safety..."

As they turned the corner, the wall of the mansion broke with a flash. Stones of debris and large brickwork scattered in front of them, alongside fire and black smoke. The bang was loud, but drowned out, at least for Lazara. Almost instantly, her feet took her back, even as she heard a bark of laughter come from the hole in the wall.

She bumped into someone with her back and turned, relieved when she saw Otho and Enoon, the two guards.

"Father is possessed, don't fight him," she said, without any filters of emotion in her speech, though she probably sounded scared. She then turned back to see Lord Lightbrook, who stood in the hole in the wall he blew out. He was looking away, but scanning in their direction.

When he saw the four of them, a bestial grin formed on his face.

"Crap," Lazara said, then began running backward under Snake's control. The two guards weren't long after.

Lazara turned the corner with a stumble, just as a massive explosion threw her forward again, at an oblique angle. She felt several pieces of rubble impact her back like bullets, one of them hitting the back of her head and causing blood to spurt out like a geyser. She landed with half of her body in a hedge, silently grateful to the universe for its place in cushioning her.

Snake didn't waste time, wresting control of her legs and standing up. He started running in the direction of the other courtyard entrance, from where they could get to the exit. He knew that hiding in this situation wasn't plausible.

As they ran, Lazara saw the guards standing up and scattering in opposite directions. A blast of light engulfed the space between them, throwing Otto in her direction and into an outside storehouse. Fortunately, he hit the window, not a wall, but just barely. She imagined he still had broken bones.

She began to mutter incantations under her breath, channeling and holding the light in her mind, slowly making a mass of photons. She held it in her right arm, making it float around her, a centimeter away from her skin.

A wall on the other side of the mansion blew open just moments before Snake and Lazara reached the courtyard entrance, and Lightbrook levitated out, carried on a wave of broken matter suspended in motes of solid light.

She was dead sure her father could never do anything like that.

His body was almost entirely covered in light in hues of orange, yellow, white, and dark blue; his head was like a star, shining at them brightly, to the point where Lazara could barely make out the grin behind it. His arms were folded in a posture that lacked any form of impression from their actions thus far; like a dark prince looking at cattle to be slaughtered.

Snake stopped her body from moving, reconsidering what direction to move in.

She whispered the incantation, "I love my father, and he loves me. I love light, and so does he. Through love, through light, may we be safe from the likes of you."

Lazara raised her hand groggily, barely pushing her muscles to point at him, even as pink light gathered in it. The arm-thick beam of pink hit him squarely in the chest.

Adversary's grin vanished as he looked down at where it hit him.

That was enough of a distraction for Snake to run under him and in the direction of the exit.

Because the beam itself didn't do anything.

Lazara was prepared for the next time that Adversary threw a blast, already incanting a shield spell. A reflective barrier manifested behind them, invisible. Then another; a second layer. She began incanting for a third, but didn't have the time.

The blast of white and grey impacted her defense, propelling them forward and breaking one of Lazara's ribs as her chest thumped against the ground. They were thrown to the earth, next to the entrance of the castle's inner courtyard. Lazara pushed herself up, helped a little by Snake, and they were rested against the wall with their back.

Lazara's eyes hinged up, begging to close and rest already.

Adversary hovered there, impassively, charging up another blast of light.

Instead, a figure in silvery armor jumped on top of him from behind, wrapping his arms around his neck and wrestling to get him off of the platform he was flying on.

Lazara's eyes began to close, but some force from the outside kept them open forcefully. Kept them working, even as things struggled to become blurry.

Snake? she asked, moving her lips, even though no words left. Her throat felt dry.

She heard him respond, much more clearly and closely now, "It's fine, child. Don't fight, just rest; our reinforcements have arrived. I am taking care of your body, closing wounds, keeping your heart beating. You'd be dead by now, otherwise."

Everything began to turn blurry, then clear again, as she saw a bunch of people surround Adversary.

Matrim and Timory were trying to throw him off the platform by jumping onto it and pushing and pulling respectively, while Belladonna and Sylvester were casting some kind of spellwork. Support spells and exorcisms?

Sylvester looked like he was getting a headache from trying whatever he was trying, so he was probably trying to exorcise father.

Finally, Adversary was pushed off, landing on Timory as the two hit the ground.

Matrim hopped off the collapsing platform, then moved to restrict his arms, but before he could, the coruscant aura of light that was surrounding Lord Lightbrook until that point exploded outwards in every direction, power surging through the air.

Everyone was flung away like a ragdoll, scattered like dust.

Belladonna got up, then started incanting a spell. Before she was finished, a bolt of light impacted her stomach. She kept incanting, ignoring the pain.

Matrim stood up next and ran behind Adversary to drag the wounded Timory away from the fight.

A group of heavily armored men ran into the yard, bearing halberds and shields.

One of them approached Lazara and Snake, lying his hand on her shoulder. A warmth spread through her chest, then the rest of her body. Moving became easy, and her thoughts became clearer.

"What's happening?" she asked.

Suddenly, her ears could make out new things. The little sounds of her surroundings that were drowned out previously; the distant rustling of fire, small explosions of light, a dozen footsteps every second, screams, and orders being yelled oui.

Belladonna cast a spell that caused translucent, ethereal chains to sprout from the ground. They wrapped themselves around Lightbrook's wrists and ankles, keeping him in place as he began to scream curses. The armored men encircled him at a distance, then began to chant as a group.

The armored man next to Lazara looked at her, and Lazara looked at him and squinted, making out the insignia of the Church on his chest. No particular church, but rather the Church of Ten.

He answered, "The pope sent us. He informed us a great evil is attacking this place, and we teleported here. What manner of arch-fiend are we dealing with?"

[] Write-in.

###

Savior Panel
"NO!"​

It's 24th Goldleaf, 1310, in the late evening, roughly 19:36.

You are outside, near a side entrance to the castle courtyard. In front of you, a group of Church paladins (???) has encircled the Adversary, while Belladonna is keeping him rooted to the spot. They are presumably trying to exorcise him, and from what you can tell of the curses and attempts at attacking back, they are at least keeping him restricted.

During this Chapter, Lazara was heavily wounded, almost on the brink of collapse and death by the time that reinforcements arrived. Snake shifted his attention to subconsciously hypnotizing her brain to redirect the movements of her internal muscles, to lock up or restrict movement in certain blood vessels and generally prevent bleeding, keep her breathing, and keep her heart from stopping (it would have done so twice by now otherwise.) Even without Snake, Lazara would have likely survived to the paladins getting here to stabilize her, but it was close.

Speaking of, the paladin who you're talking to had cast a stabilizing spell to prevent blood from leaving the body, move broken bones into place and keep them there, and to keep your brain oxygenated, as well as to suppress pain. He has now moved onto washing your body in healing energy, but it won't fully heal your wounds.

How did the pope know you were in danger? That's a question for another day, but I'll let you in on the fact that an 11-year-old noble girl snooping around is a part of it.

Right now, you're as lucid as someone who just woke up from a sleep and is experiencing a hangover. Physically, you can move around freely, though the paladin might insist you do not. You can also speak and have full clarity of your actions.

No supplementary actions can be taken at this moment.

 

[Birdsie]

Chapter 12: Licking Your Wounds

###​

Warning: This chapter contains squeamish descriptions of vomit, and moderately graphic, but nonetheless disturbing descriptions of death. If you wish to avoid reading, then skip towards the next section (marked with a triple, center-aligned "#." The situation is summarized there, without any details, only showing the end results of what happened.)

The warning is here because while, personally, I do not find the chapter too offensive, I am aware some people might not have the stomach or taste for this extent of violence. Please, let me know if I went overboard, so I can remain advised in the future. I also want it to be clear that I am in no way glorifying violence or death. Thank you.

###​

"I'm not s-sure," she stammered, still trying to wrap her head around the situation going on right in front of her.

Lazara felt as though she was seeing it from far away; looking down at people on a plain from the top of a mountain, even though it was happening here and now.

She looked at the paladin with fallen eyes. "It possessed him while he was exhausted and using drugs to keep going warding everything." Her gaze developed a questioning tincture. "Can dad be saved?"

The paladin, armored may he be, looked uneasy with the question. He hesitated to speak, but finally relented, "I can't promise that."

Lazara nodded, then laid there for several seconds, breathing and recuperating. She could feel her bones and cracked ribs, snapped into place, slowly mending. The sensation was rightfully disturbing, but she felt no pain from it.

The paladin kept his hand on her shoulder, a steady stream of faint, yellow energy passing from him and into her.

He began to explain, "You may already know this, but: Healing magic is not a perfect solution. It is never perfect, and most bodies often reject outside healing magic, or even their own healing magic. The new tissues will be softer for some time, not everything will be healed instantly, and you shouldn't do anything strenuous for a month or three."

She nodded, calmer now that everything was fine.

The paladins behind the one healing her seemed to have a lid on things, keeping Adversary contained under some kind of bright, holy forcefield. They seemed to slowly be snuffing out his essence, like someone putting a bucket on top of a candle to cut off oxygen, but with a forcefield and a manifestation of pure assholery.

She snorted internally, then decided to try something, even if it didn't work. Lazara tried to mumble some incantations to add her own magic to the group chant, but she couldn't find anything. Her own thoughts seemed to slip through her hands like sand, when she tried to grip them.

Lazara decided to just rest, letting the paladin do his work while she laid there for around half a minute. Then, something unexpected happened.

She felt a pulse of something. Lazara's eyes shot open in sudden horror, recognizing the feeling from somewhere.

It felt ancient and distant, but she knew it. It was so familiar: the sensation... she almost remembered talking to someone, in a realm of thought. The memories slipped away when she gripped at them, but she realized the only important fact:

He was gazing at her.

Light exploded behind the paladin's back, causing Lazara to look over his shoulder, and for him to spin around.

Adversary cursed the paladins. Death, hollowness, end, silence.

Lazara never felt so much wrongness from anything. She felt dirty just feeling him exist.

It was like his very essence was looking at her from behind a window, sneering, lashing out in hate, and yet it felt hollow. How could something be hateful and hollow at the same time? It was a mix of these two passions; a concept that doesn't exist.

How can rage and resignation be combined, when they seem the opposite? The paradoxical creature in front of her emitted that very idea.

The paladins wavered, but kept in a tight formation around Lord Lightbrook, shields upraised and halberds pointed; washing him in holy light as they spoke prayers.

Lightbrook screamed, his mouth opening and his jaw breaking and falling off, to reveal a tunnel of searing, white light, burning through his body. A tongue of the light came out of his throat like a tentacle, moved about by its own, malicious sentience. It was about thirty feet long, and kept growing gradually.

It lashed out. Most of the paladins dodged by falling prone, supine, or jumping back, but two of them didn't make it. The tentacle cut straight through their shields and armor, bisecting them effortlessly.

Lazara felt a demon grip her heart, as ice ran down her veins. She could feel the heartbeat in her neck, pulsing uncomfortably and threatening to burst out.

The broken Lightbrook - was he alive at this point? - opened his eyes, revealing two abysses of purple light, washing everything in the area. In milliseconds after seeing it, Lazara felt sick to the stomach: she could tell it wasn't normal light. It was a dark, violet, hateful wavelength, combined with something else, beyond the usual spectrum. Something with more energy.

She was sure her father couldn't do any of this. Adversary was burning his soul up; squeezing it with an iron fist, like a lemon, to get the last bits of power and raze it at the same time, while also using it to break the body. To break everything around him in an explosion of violence.

Her father's energy, spirit, and affinity for magic, but with the Adversary's experience, ruthlessness, and desire to inflict pain.

Lazara stood up and bolted behind cover, behind a pillar, while the paladins chanted and interrupted his malign spellwork.

The light from his eyes disappeared for moments, before he opened them again, twice as intense. Black residue built up on the walls hit by the light.

She heard a swish of the light tentacle, and several paladins fell down again.

Lazara pulled off Snake from her shoulders, to his chagrin, then settled him on the ground behind the pillar, for his safety.

Lazara hazarded to look from behind cover and saw that Sylvester was creating shields and healing paladins as hastily as he could, using one-time healing spells, instead of that constant healing light the paladin taking care of her used.

The bisected ones were finished, but the ones puking up their guts due to the light could apparently be saved, as Sylvester focused on them.

Belladonna was casting barriers of her own, trying to contain the purple-pink maelstrom, but her fields broke as soon as they were created, the light tearing and searing through.

Lazara didn't see Timory and Matrim anywhere, thankfully.

One of the paladins decided to take matters in his own hands, grasping his halberd in reverse. He hurled it at Adversary's heart, but the whip of light burned the flying halberd, then took the paladin's head in revenge without hesitation or mercy.

The purple light began to fizzle out, weakening, even as paladins fell.

One of them ran near to where Lazara was, threw off his helmet and began to puke blood. It was all over his face; coming out of his nose, eyes, nose, even ears; painted on a face that endured suffering and horror. After a moment, something gelatinous and red came out of his mouth as he screamed in terror. After that, his features became blank, like a corpse's and he stared forward for several long seconds. Then, he collapsed; dead or unconscious.

The paladins were scattering. The few ones still alive were clearly smarter, more competent, as much as it hurt to admit. They took cover wherever they could, focusing their magic to form personal barriers on top of their magical tower shields.

They were hoping to wait this out, wait for him to lose his power, or call backup.

After a few seconds, Lord Lightbrook fell to the tiles with a splatter of blood, a trickle of red hatred oozing off his corpse before fading away.

Lazara stared for what felt like minutes, shaking and disbelieving.

Father?

She stepped out from behind the pillar, feeling numb.

There was no hate, or fear, or even anger in her anymore. No more shock or concussion left to worry about. Just numbness.

She approached where her father laid, with a stupidly gormless look on what was left of his half-melted, jawless face. A look unbefitting of the perpetually regal Lord Lightbrook.

Lazara fell to her knees, still numb. A part of her, somewhere near the lungs, wanted to laugh for some reason. Maybe she was broken? She rejected that idea, just staring emptily into space.

She didn't even notice as water began to gather in her eyes, before lines of tears went down her cheek. She began to croak inside her own throat, trying to bite down on laughter and whimpering of any kind.

But she couldn't.

She cried, and cried, and cried, for what felt like several, full minutes. Several minutes of nothing but her crying, tears streaming out of her eyes as she felt a deep void take root in her heart, then spread to her chest, and the rest of her. Thoughts of unfairness and hate swam through her thoughts, then back out as soon as they appeared, replaced by more crying and whimpering.

At some point, she forgot what she was crying for. Or maybe she wasn't sure. Was it her father? The loss of her perfect life? The fact she didn't prepare better? It didn't matter.

She had lots of reasons to cry, so she cried, all the while feeling numb and sick and void in the bowels.

Then, she bent over and puked out a mixture of vile yellow and red; bile mixed with her blood and partially liquefied innards. Whatever that light did, it was nasty, but she didn't care right now.

She wasn't in pain, or in shock. She didn't feel anything except numbness.

And somehow, that numbness was worse. Somehow, that numbness was killing her.

Lazara punched the ground with her fist several times, ripping skin and flesh. She didn't care for any pain, because it was drowned out in the numbness. If anything, the fact that the ground refused to care about her punching it; refused to shatter and move aside, was more painful.

She kicked with her feet, punched with the bottoms of her fists and cried, wanting to puke again but keeping it inside.

"Why? Why, why, why, why? Why me? Why us? I never wanted this," she cried to herself.

Snake, who had been silent behind her for a good minute now, was unsure of how to proceed. Hesitantly, he started, "We... I... Child, I'm... I'm..."

"Shut up," she answered with venom, clenching her fists so hard it hurt. The answer was without hate, but radiating fury.

Lazara looked up, pushing her hair aside, as she determined the situation.

The paladin who'd stabilized her was dead, his head lying a foot away from his body, his armor painted in rust and pitch. His expression wasn't the peaceful face of someone who died surrounded by comrades and proud to do his duty, but rather the face of someone full of fear and pain.

Why? That's just not fair...

Sylvester was halfway unconscious, lying on the ground with his head craned sideways so he could puke and spit out blood even as he breathed and stared blankly.

Belladonna was gripping her stomach and sitting with her back against the wall, her clothing covered in shades of yellow and red, freckled with bits of blood. Most horrifying was the partly dried cone of red that started near her collar and expanded down her clothing. She puked red, green and yellow onto her clothing just then, showing how it became so.

The paladins - or whatever alive ones were left - were also there, but they weren't moving. Or maybe they were, but she couldn't see because of the armor.

Lazara didn't feel any post-battle adrenaline, or hatred. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe she should be screaming more.

Right now? She felt numb, and just wanted to see someone she loved. Timory or her mom. Anyone. Just... anyone.

Lazara felt the desire to vomit again, pushing strongly despite her resistance. This one, she couldn't stave off by careful breathing or forcing her throat to close. She respectfully angled away from her father, then let her innards loose.

Something gelatinous, red like blood, fell out of her mouth alongside a stream of stomach gunk.

I hate this, she thought through her tears. This is nothing more than an annoyance. Can we be done with it already?

She felt dizzy as she stood, and more than a little light-headed. The numbness was still there, and she doubted it'd leave her for a long time.

A part of her wished there was a God she could blame, but blaming Paladine for this didn't feel right.

She wasn't sure even a deity could help much.

She could only help herself.

But how? What to do now?

Actions:

[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] Cry some more.
[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] Cry for me.
[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] Your dad is never coming back. Cry me a river.
[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] You're pathetic.
[] Write-in.

###

Savior Panel
"..."​

It's 24th Goldleaf, 1310, in the late evening, roughly 19:40.

You've won, at a price.

Lord Lightbrook is dead, and even a resurrection spell from a very competent priest is unlikely to make it otherwise. All of his internal organs, including the brain and heart, were melted, burned, and partly vaporized: your father is not coming back; the Adversary made sure of that.

Due to rapid blood loss, you're feeling dizzy and lightheaded, but there's no longer enough vertigo to prevent you from walking. You aren't in any pain, but your throat feels parched and dry from screaming and vomiting up bile and blood, to the point where speaking hurts. Your knuckles and fists are a little bruised and have tiny lacerations, but didn't come in contact with vomit. Other than this, you're fine, and can even theoretically cast magic; though the numb mindset might make that more challenging.

Your body is also saturated with the spiritual concepts of "hate," "decay," and "death," which promote these three notions to take place. Combined, they are causing you to vomit up blood, and other symptoms may begin showing soon if you don't purify yourself, use anti-magic, or wait for the effect to run out of mana.

Timory and Matrim aren't present, and the same goes for your mother, so they are presumably safe.

Belladonna and Sylvester aren't looking so hot, but probably aren't much worse than you. Belladonna is conscious and will respond if you talk to her, but is likely to have difficulty speaking due to her state. Sylvester is on the fringe of consciousness and unlikely to respond but might crane his head and eyes to look at you if you catch his attention.

Out of the paladin group that came here, only seven are left alive, three of whom will die within minutes if not given medical aid and/or some sort of ritual to purge the concentrated concept of hatred from their bodies.

The four remaining paladins are on the brink of life, somewhere similar to your own health state, but have gone into shock at seeing their comrades (trained for years to deal with this specific type of situation, and with a considerable amount of experience) get slaughtered like cattle: you will have to help break them out of their despair first, if they are to help you.

Ironically, you and Snake are in the best state currently. Mostly because Lazara ran for cover very early and got affected the least, as she could tell the light had malignant effects just form seeing it, thanks to her specialty.

If anyone's curious what Adversary's purple light was; it was a mixture of high-energy thermal light, a little bit of ionizing radiation, and a fuckload of astral conceptual magics, mostly related to hatred, decay, death, and other nasty ideas that Adversary likes to weaponize. The radiation itself acted as a sort of "trigger" for the effect that the conceptual magic is having on you, right now. You'll experience symptoms similar to acute radiation poisoning, only nastier and they will set in quicker.

Actions:

[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] Cry some more.
[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] Cry for me.
[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] Your dad is never coming back. Cry me a river.
[] Stand there, feeling pathetic.
[] You're pathetic.
[] Write-in.

No supplementary actions may be taken at this time.

 

[Birdsie]

Chapter 13: The Savior

###​

Lazara felt numb, standing there, feeling pathetic and useless.

People around her were suffering. Moments ago, they weren't suffering. They weren't even here, or expecting any of this.

Earlier today, she was trying to record her dreams to remember her past life. She'd read a response message from the pope, who apparently deemed it prudent to attach some sort of security spell to the letter. And then, she spent the afternoon observing Matrim and Timory spar against each other; bond, even.

She talked to her father for the last time. That happened, too.

How did such a normal day turn into this? Tears streamed down her cheeks again, cold and numb against her cold and numb skin. Lifeless.

Is that it?

What her life will be? Was she destined to suffer, because of some ancient evil's preconceptions about her existence?

So numb.

She felt so empty, so hollow, so unloved. Not by anyone in particular, just the universe in general.

Is this what my life is going to be? How it all ends?

The feeling of vacancy was familiar, oddly enough.

Lazara blinked, realization dawning. The last streaks of her tears went out of her eyes, and she wiped the rest away with her cuff.

That's what you are, aren't you? You're this feeling. You represent this, she thought, gulping and beginning to retake the reins on her own emotions. She wouldn't allow herself to be smothered by the emptiness that caused this.

I reject you. I reject this numbness.

Lazara looked around herself.

He used hatred. He used hollowness, and pain, decay, and death. Those were his weapons: his side of the spectrum.

If she was supposed to be his antithesis, she'd need to take control of her own side. A Savior's power wasn't some inherent sparkling power: it was the ability to realize this fact, to become his opposite. To save what the Adversary tried to break. Salvation as opposed to damnation.

He mentioned a lack of greed; she recalled now, with stark clarity.

The Adversary gave her options, in the beginning. Tempted her with shiny powers to make his defeat certain, which was, in reality, a bundle of treacheries sprinkled in glitter. By choosing not to partake in that, not to sully herself, she'd gained something. Something integral and precious, both a proof of purity as well as a catalyst for further growth. An essential element to being his enemy, beyond opening up to his manipulation.

She began to think alongside those paths, tracing her own mind. For once, it was surprisingly pliable, willing to cooperate. She could recall her own birth with enough clarity to remember it as if it were yesterday, and she could remember other things, before that.

She remembered what the voice told her, or tried to tell her. The message that it tried to relay to her advantage.

'This world cannot judge the Savior, and because of that, the Savior mustn't be of this world.'

A soul interpreted beliefs and thoughts in the mind into reality; into the Weave. Magic was instinctive on many levels, but instinct can only go so far. That's why incantations are a necessity, why even the omniscient mind has to convince itself that it desires: Because instinct isn't capable of being meticulous.

Lazara was positive what she was about to cast would be the strongest spellwork she'd woven yet. Because she was never as certain of anything as much as she was right now.

"I promise here," she said out loud, closing her eyes and breathing in sharply.

My love against your hatred.

My hope against your hollowness.

My calm against your pain.

My healing against your decay.

My life against your death.

Her justice to clash against his evil.

For a moment, Lazara felt the universe in tune with herself, thrumming inside her soul. It responded to her realization, singing through her, desiring her to get rid of this wrongness.

She'd happily oblige. A Savior's job is to save.

White is the color of every color put together; all colors unified. Black is the anti-color, the shade of the very absence of color. Saturation against desaturation. Light against darkness. Savior against Adversary.

The color that entered Lazara's hand wasn't blue, nor was it white. It was much more than a frequency of electromagnetic wavelength to be interpreted by human eyes; it was an idea, interpreted as color by the universe. Everything interpreted as an electromagnetic anomaly.

The primordial power of the cosmos, resonating across multiple levels of reality, directed by a sentient idea: to right wrongs.

It was white, because it was every color, and it was blue because it was meant to save, and it was many other things: a riddle that cannot be deciphered.

The light washed over the area, righting wrongs.

Petty hatreds were purified. The decays of entropy were cast away and replaced with the light of creation.

The light wasn't effective enough on its own, so Lazara shifted mental gears. The light shifted in response. Instead of washing over everything, Lazara put her hands together to create something similar to a fireplace of the light.


Streaks of light came out of it, like patterns of spiritual energy. They didn't hesitate, weaving across the air to enter the battered and broken bodies of her comrades. As soon as it entered their wounds, the light intensified and transmuted into flesh and bone laced anew with love and truth.

Healing.

One of the paladins stood up straight, bewildered by what was happening, looking at his hands and clenching them to test his new strength. Previously, he'd been bisected at the neck. Now, he stood alive, calm, and without a shred of despair in his mind.

He knelt before her and prayed, tears of joy going down his face.

The other paladins followed soon, not shadowed by doubt. The entire platoon was healed with extraordinary ease and began to pray and gush her with profuse, yet quiet thanks.

Sylvester, once he realized he wasn't feeling like shit, looked up at her and cried, then began to pray for himself.

Belladonna wasn't very religious, but she knelt even quicker than the old man, her forehead almost touching the ground.

Her father's jaw attached itself back to his skull, and he took in a sharp breath, followed by coughing. He didn't open his eyes but she couldn't force him to get up. Lazara could see his soul - her power translating it into the light she could read - and saw that it was broken in many ways. His mind wasn't holding up too good, either; shattered and fragmented.

He's going to be lucky if the coma lasts less than two decades, and if he has more than a scant few memories of his past life when he wakes up.

A problem for tomorrow, she thought. But today...

What now?
[] Write-in.

###​

In another room, an old butler - Johann Aloisi - began to scratch the skin on his forearm to get rid of the last bits of dry blackness, not too indifferent from the bark of a tree.

He looked around the scorched foyer, confused and scared, even though some presence was flowing into his mind and assuring him everything was alright.

He blinked in sudden realization that his life had been spared.

Acting on instinct, he knelt and began to pray to whatever force saved him, not knowing if it was one of the gods, or something else.

###​

In another layer of reality, the Adversary felt a physical force repelling him away from the Lightbrook mansion.

Even through the force, he could spy, reach out with his senses. What he saw - that his work had been undone so easily - made him seethe and rearrange several backup plans.

###​

Somewhere, kilometers away, a young boy in white-gold robes smiled and put his mirror away.

He took a sip of exquisite tea, brewed with mint leaves from a desert country far away. He savored its taste on his tongue, the liquid feeling warm in his mouth.

He swallowed after a few moments.

"Oh, man," he said, with a mirthful expression and closed eyes, "and they say I'm controversial."

###​

Trait Gained: Savior.
Trait Gained: Enlightened.

###

Savior Panel
"Excellent work. How are you feeling after sleeping so long, Savior?"​

It's 24th Goldleaf, 1310, in the late evening, roughly 19:41.

You've awakened to your true nature! Congratulations.

As a minor funfact: you've genuinely hacked the system into giving yourself a pseudo-cheat skill. How so? Let me explain:

Spoiler: Long Explanation + Explanation of Your Current Powerset

Other than extreme resistance to the Adversary's influence, and the ability to confer that resistance to your own magic - a Savior isn't supposed to have special abilities. That, and meta-knowledge that an Adversary exists in the first place.

However, by giving so much meaning to the idea of directly opposing the Adversary, and the sincerity of your belief that this is how a Savior operates, you've pretty much convinced your soul to go: "Yeah, sounds about right. Let's kick his ass!" and unlocking a bunch of its inner mechanisms for you, free of charge.

Technically speaking, anyone could do this. That's what the Enlightened Trait represents.

This is the equivalent of training as a Buddhist monk for several decades and reaching Nirvana, or Golconda, or what have you: being in tune with one's inner self; with one's soul. Anyone can do this to reach their apex, you just did it early by mashing the: "I'M THE SAVIOR AND THIS IS MEANINGFUL" button so fast and hard that your own soul began to accept it as the truth. The fact that you've been reincarnated, are an entity called the Savior, and are in emotional turmoil caused by an entity in opposition to you are three things that gave this process the edge that actually allowed it to happen, where it wouldn't happen for anyone else.

The fact that the universe wants the Adversary to be expelled helps, too.

Anyway, you can now shoot off Conceptual Magic like no one's business. And speaking of magic, it's going to be much easier now, on every level. The Enlightened Trait, or at least the kind of Enlightenment you've gained, represents something like forming a direct gateway with your own soul and being in tune with it.

In practice, this means you won't have to speak incantations anymore. You might have to think them, for more complicated spells, but speaking them out loud is only required if you want to reach some nebulous ham value. Generally, magic is even more instinctive now: If you think, "I want this guy to fly as far as I can make him," and mildly concentrate, your soul will take that as the green light for generating enough kinetic energy to throw him from California to New Jersey.

On top of that, elemental affinities and methods don't matter. Or at least, a lack of them doesn't matter. Think of it this way: You were bad at water, slightly bad at earth, average at fire, average at wind, and very good at light.

Now, everything that was bad is average, everything that was average is good, and everything that was very good is excellent. There are no "bads" anymore in that equation. Your soul isn't afraid of water because of past-life trauma anymore. If you encounter such a block, it will be self-imposed, and easier to get rid of.

As for methodology, you could probably spec out into physical magic enough to give Timory a good scare.

Continuing on what spiritual enlightenment offers, elemental affinities aren't the only thing.

Every school of magic or school of magic-related thought isn't a concern anymore. If you know what effect you want to achieve, without knowing how - you can still cast the spell. Your soul will just go: "Oh, I see what you mean," and auto-complete the process in a way it considers appropriate.

That said, I still wouldn't try casting complicated spells without research. The "way it considers appropriate" will most likely also be the "way of draining all your mana in the most magically inefficient spell known to conversion tables." And using this method to resurrect someone? Ouch, that could have some unnatural consequences. What I'm saying is: You have the power, but be careful playing with it.

If you do something that's too grandiose for your soul's understanding, you will drain yourself in one spell. This is part of the reason why mages often repeat the same low-level spells before moving onto more advanced versions: it gives their souls time to learn, not their minds. The fact that this limiter has been removed doesn't mean that the reasons it was there in the first place aren't there anymore.

Last but not least, you have the equivalent of multi-layer ESP (detecting magic, detecting auras, detecting spirits, detecting shit in the ethereal plane, retrocognition, precognition, reading psychic impressions, understanding magic, communicating with souls, a bunch of others,) and eidetic memory, because communicating with your soul means it can feed you any data it picks up, including any memories it decided to store (read: all of your memories.)

That said, don't take this as, "every upgrade box in the skill tree that was there has been bought," because that's not what this is. This is more like, "we now have a shortcut to temporarily scrabble up a jury-rigged version of any upgrade box we want, at an increased cost. Plus some extra rare perks and several unlocks in the 'conceptual tree.'"

Be careful. I don't like to drop sudden death on my players, but using this advantage trivially ("let's create Cthulhu ex nihilo!") is a good way to make me change my mind pronto.

In other news, the current crisis is averted. Everyone in a 125-meter radius has been revived and healed using Conceptual Magic, but you are out of mana. That said, everyone's prayers are imperceptibly improving your current rate of mana recovery.

Within roughly 10-20 seconds, you will get a splitting headache; the equivalent of your soul calling you an idiot for using up all of your energy in one casting.

Your father's not too hot, even though he's alive. His previously liquefied organs have been made solid again, but his system is very delicate and tender right now.

His brain hasn't healed properly at all, on a mental level: physically it's fine. The neurons are all there, but they're barely firing and there's not enough neuroplasticity for the brain to properly rewire itself into working order. From your best estimate, he'll be in a coma for the rest of his life unless something changes or he's very lucky. Even then, when he wakes up, he won't remember even a word of his past life, mostly because his brain hasn't been as much returned to how it was, as it was recreated into working order.

Ordinarily, his soul would step in here and provide his brain with his old set of memories (souls store memories of past lives and the current life,) but his soul has been utterly wrecked by the Adversary, and currently, your Conceptual Magic is too weak, and you're too dim on the subject, to fix souls. You could definitely try, but please remember what I said about letting your soul auto-complete anything more complex than bending spoons.

Well, I'm exaggerating a bit with the spoonbending, but you get the idea.

Right now, you are standing over your father's body. Sylvester and Belladonna are at your feet, praising you, the universe, and just about everything else in a moment of epiphany. The paladins are behind them, also on their knees, and praising; you and their gods, but mostly you. Pretty sure you could start a religion out of this.

Through the link with your soul, you can feel your mother, Timory, and Matrim. Clairvoyance has never been this easy!

The latter two have fled to the main courtyard, where Matrim is healing Timory's injuries. Both are safe and will heal in time.

Your mother is rushing down the main stairwell and will probably start talking with the butler who got scorched about what happened. You project that they'll meet up with Matrim and Timory afterwards, and then rush to your current location, in roughly 2-3 minutes.

You can feel through the link with your soul, that Adversary's presence was still strong after your father died, but he is escaping now, in fear of your light. Also, someone was scrying on your location up until now: most likely the pope.

Are there any Supplementary Actions you wish to take?
[] Write-in.
[] More of... [specific situation/character; next update will contain more related content in favor of other content. This isn't an interlude, merely less abbreviation and more detailed interactions]
[] System change... [write shorter or longer updates, change the rules, something else? Currently, aiming to write less than 4.5k words per update, but more than 3k]

 

[Birdsie]

Chapter 14: Sleep Again

###​

For a moment, less than ten seconds, but more than six, Lazara was feeling fine.

In a way, she'd felt too lucid, like her life was a video game, and she only just realized that she was a gamer, sitting behind a screen. That changed after that moment passed. Changed harshly.

A wave of overwhelming dullness spread through her brain, eating away at her thought processes. With what brain matter was left working, she'd felt like a drunk caveman.

Horrible pain followed the dullness as if a prong was angled against her skull and someone rapped a hammer into it repeatedly; with a balance of force that didn't crack her skull, but kept delivering regular payloads of sharp agony into it. It paled in comparison to what she'd felt minutes prior.

The third sensation was an almost chemical fire in her brain. Like she'd somehow swallowed hot peppers with her head.

Under these extenuating circumstances, she didn't feel it necessary to go anywhere. Lazara dropped to her kness in front of the praying crowd in front of her, and let herself sit there, breathing and recuperating.

She didn't even complain or whimper about the pain and dullness. She's felt worse. Though, if this is what running out of mana felt like, she'd definitely avoid that in the future.

The paladins shot her some apprehensive looks when she fell to her knees.

"Are you okay?" Belladonna asked, expression more melancholic than worried.

"I ran out of mana," Lazara admitted, grabbing her forehead.

Belladonna sighed. "Of course you did. That was conceptual magic; quite advanced, too. I admit that I'm envious. Even as I am now, that kind of spellwork is difficult for me."

Lazara shot her a teasing grin, which receded into a neutral and blank expression in seconds. She was waiting for the day to be over, at this point. Waiting to just go to bed and sleep all of this off, in hopes that she could be at least a fraction more refreshed the next day.

Why did life have to be so unkind?

For a moment, Lazara felt her soul tugging at her mind, offering a solution. Or perhaps, she was tugging at her soul, looking for one?

Some kind of subjective self-targeted mental spell. It caused her to act automatically, like a robot, while her conscious mind went on a coffee break. After that, she could reclaim her memories or leave them be.

Lazara definitely didn't do that. She was already out of energy, and trying to cast something that complicated - especially outside of her specialty box - was as good as twisting the knife that was already in her head.

Something also told her that, as smartly as her soul might've tried to present the auto-completion process, outlining each step, its actual lack of experience in that brand of thaumaturgy was nothing but a disaster waiting to come out of the proverbial box.

Nuh-uh, not today. No unknown and suspicious spells here, no siree!

The pensive after-battle silence stretched for several seconds.

One of the paladins said, in equal measures thoughtfully and in good humor, "You know. If you'd told me five years ago that some vile fiend from another universe would cut my head off with a tongue made out of light, and I'd survive that, I'd have reported you to the Inquisitors for suspicion of taking fairy mushrooms."

Some people chuckled, and others just nodded with smiles. Everyone was tired, too tired to lead a proper conversation. Apparently, getting resurrected isn't too fun either.

After what felt like several minutes, Timory, Matrim, a guy in a tuxedo, and Lazara's mother came to join the group. Daevina and Timory almost immediately came up and knelt, embracing Lazara in a familial, bone-crushing hug. The annoying part was that Timory's grin indicated he was drawing pleasure from her obvious displeasure.

While still hugging Lazara, Lady Lightbrook looked at her unconscious husband with a radiant smile. "I'm so glad he's okay. We're all fine." She stroked her daughter's hair, as if to commend her for managing this all.

Lazara felt her breath freeze where it was, going through her throat.

She considered dropping the bombshell right then and there, but internally stopped herself before she could do something that couldn't be taken back. Her mother didn't need that kind of stress right now. It'd be better to let her be happy now and deliver the bad news tomorrow. Preferably while being vague about estimates of when and if her father ever woke up. Lazara wasn't even certain that she could ever fully help him recover.

It was all a big maybe, floating nebulously in the air, mocking her in all of its ethereal pressure.

In retrospect, Lazara felt a coldness shivering across her back. Not because she almost died several times today.

How could she think of her father with such detachment? As just another casualty in a war that was only starting? Any other eleven-year-old would be crying their eyes out and yelling that papa isn't coming back, but right now, she just couldn't find the effort in herself to do that.

Lazara didn't like the implications and frowned appropriately, then asked her mother if she could go to her room and sleep, once the headache passed. It took a minute to convince Lady Lightbrook that she was as healthy as a fish: terrible stinging inside of her skull aside.

She remained with the rest of the group for longer than ten minutes, waiting for the migraine to wane at least a little.

By the time she was getting up, the paladins had moved to the outer garden, where they gathered some logs and lit a flame using magic. The guards, who also survived, met up in the garden with everyone else. The events took a natural course, and turned towards some kind of half-party, half-conversation, full-confusion. No one really knew anyone else's name, or function - with some exceptions, such as Lazara, her mother, and Timory - but everyone talked as if they did as if they had known each other for years.

It was actually kind of comforting. They did, in fact, collectively survive a traumatic event involving an entity comparable to the worst archdemons, after all.

The rest of the staff were called down. Daevina explained the situation to them and ordered them to prepare a small and sudden banquet. Not minutes later, the maids and butlers brought drinks and sausages to be roasted above the fireplace, then came back with trays of cheeses and other minor snacks. Meanwhile, her father was moved upstairs to recuperate in his room - Lazara briefly explained his afflictions to the medic and had him promise not to tell Lady Lightbrook until she, herself, could do that.

At some point, a group of clergymen in white-gold robes, armed with staff-spears, began to move into the garden in tight formations. The paladins got up and went to speak with them, off on the side. Their conversation lasted scantly a minute or two, before the clerics went back out, and the squad of paladins returned to the party.

Apparently, they were going to be stationed in the area, now, by the pope's orders. For the foreseeable future, at least.

The little party continued, and eventually, Lazara felt well enough to walk. She stood up.

"I'm going to excuse myself, now," she muttered, loud enough that everyone could hear.

This drew attention. One of the paladins stood up, then knelt in front of her and stared at the ground for a long moment. From the insignia and ornaments on his armor, she could tell that he was the captain, or sergeant, or whatever: the boss of the group.

"Lady Lightbrook," he started, "I believe I speak for all my men here when I say that we owe our lives to you. We worship different gods, but in duty we are bound, and by duty we are led. We are personally obliged to return the favor, so, if you ever need anything from any of us - personally, as people, not knights - please, let us know."

Most of what he said went in one ear and came out the other. She was too tired and hurting to care properly, though she acknowledged the bulletpoints of what he said: 'thankful,' 'owe me a favor,' 'let them know if I need anything.'

Many of the men raised tankards and cheers into the air. Lazara nodded with a smile, then vacated inside.

She went straight to her room and realized that her bed was broken after the Adversary turned it into tinder. Frowning, she went to the guest room and slept there, instead. It was bigger than her own room, actually, but she didn't really care. She made sure to leave the door open, so that anyone passing by would see her in the morning and they wouldn't raise an alarm over her disappearance or anything stupid like that. She was confident her mother wouldn't act that haphazardly even in light of the recent events, but better to be safe than woken up early with people smacking a bell, as if they were some maddened chimpanzees.

Lazara slept soundly through the night, hugging one of the pillows tighter than she'd ever hugged anything. A bed - her own or any other - was never, could never, and will never again be as comfortable as it was tonight.

She could, even through her thin clothing (she didn't bother changing into her pajama's,) feel every little bit of the mattress; the delicate movements of the springs, and the comforting fluffiness of her pillows. Like resting on a friendly cloud.

She drooled and slept, gaining more energy than ever before.

The next morning, she woke up slowly. Not groggily. Not achingly. Just slowly, in part due to comfort, and in part because of how comprehensive and strong her dream was.

Speaking of, she had almost full memories of her dream.

When she opened her eyes, she looked at her hand.

So small, pale, with little fingers. Tiny, when compared to the one she used to have.

So... my name was Lily?

###

Savior Panel
"After that much work, you deserve some rest. I'll take care of things for now."​

It's 25th Goldleaf, 1310, in the early morning, roughly 7 am.

The paladins stayed overnight in the mansion's garden; a group of clerics and wizards came to the mansion only moments before Lazara left. The paladin captain explained the situation, and the backup forces went back to the capital while making their report. The paladins are staying in the mansion until noon, and will then be relocated to barracks in Twinkle Peaks, where they will be stationed for the foreseeable future (Pope's orders.)

Lazara can remember up to 80-90% of her dreams, as a result of her Enlightenment. Her last dream provided lots of insight on her previous life, and clarified the facts she already knew about the Adversary. Lazara, currently, remembers roughly 4-6% of her previous life, though in a very 'flash-forward' fashion. She has little to no emotional attachment to her previous life.

Lazara is disturbed that she's not feeling too bad over the loss of her father. This can be attributed to either (a) a subconscious hope that he'll be healed sooner rather than later, either through her effort or something else, (b) her old memories intermingling with her new ones causing emotional dissonance, (c) the most disturbing possibility: numbness.

Belladonna has very little left to teach you, and says that she'll be moving out of the mansion at the end of the summer (35 days from now,) unless you insist/convince her to stay. Snake-in-the-Reeds is claiming something similar, but he intends to move out after the winter passes (not like he takes up any space or food, anyway.)

After you ate breakfast, the butler you saved (Johann) came by to thank you for saving his life, then informed you that the pope is requesting to meet with you, Timory, and Lady Daevina.

During the cleanup work, your Enlightening Glasses were found. Fortunately, their sturdiness means they weren't too damaged. You speculate around 20-40 minutes of work should be enough to get rid of the scratches on the lenses, but they will work correctly either way.

Don't forget about your noon meeting with nobles and the Marshall's representative on the 30th of Goldleaf!

Meta Opportunity [Interludes]
You have finished a major story arc! Do you wish to see the events from anyone else's perspectives? [LIMIT: up to 3]
[] Interlude - Reactions to recent events
[] Interlude - Pholion Lightbrook
[] Interlude - Daevina Lightbrook
[] Interlude - Timory Lightbrook
[] Interlude - King of Algrannar: Lamber Algrannar
[] Interlude - Grand Marshall: Ozirmok Algrannar
[] Interlude - Royal Family
[] Interlude - Pope Theomach Claudius Pallas Julius Alcendence
[] Interlude - Belladonna Whitebrow
[] Interlude - Matrim Redd
[] Interlude - Sylvester Spiritsorrow
[] Interlude - Snake-in-the-Reeds
[] Interlude - Dilican Redscale
[] Interlude - Pyldret
[] Interlude - Sebastian Vahki
[] Interlude - Random [???]
[] Write-in
[] No Interlude
[] Interlude - ?̻̟ ̤?̴̝̘T͖͎̲͈h̥̖ȩ ̟͖͙̪À͕̦̜d̡̲̠v̜̹̭̗̹͘e̵̼͕͔r͎̱sa͏̖̱͕r̞̜y̸̮̪͉ ?͏͇̗ ͉̬̠͔̞͡ͅ?̟͙?̝̫͕ [ERROR: INTERFERENCE DETECTED]

Social / Political Opportunity [Church of Ten]
The pope, Julius Alcendence, is inviting Timory Lightbrook, you, your mother, and up to two other individuals into a meeting with him and one of his cardinals. Publically, the purpose of the meeting is concerning his plans to crack down on fiendish activity within the Lightbrook domain. Timory insists on bringing Sylvester along. Do you attend?
[] Go there.
[] Demand that he, instead, come to you.
[] Deny the invitation, but let Timory and mother do as they please.
[] Deny the invitation, convince Timory and mother not to go.
[] Anyone you'd like to take with?
[] Write-in.

Are there any Supplementary Actions you wish to take?
[] Write-in.
[] More of... [specific situation/character; next update will contain more related content in favor of other content. This isn't an interlude, merely less abbreviation and more detailed interactions]
[] System change... [write shorter or longer updates, change the rules, something else? Currently, aiming to write less than 4.5k words per update, but more than 3k]
[] Skip to... [if you wish to skip forward to a specific point in time, use this option. Control will return automatically if anything important happens]

 

[Birdsie]

Interlude 1

###​

Death.

A very mysterious concept.

Not so much for what follows or what precedes it, but rather the instant of death. The interim between life and after-life. That moment of breathing for the last time.

That's the mysterious concept. One could call death the greatest mystery of life, and much like any great mystery, it remains widely unsolved.

At least, until he experienced it.

Sir Malcolm Strange was an accomplished knight.

'Sir' was a title reserved for nobility in Algrannar. Not every knight was a 'sir,' even if every 'sir' was a knight. But beyond being a knight, Malcolm was a paladin. A knight in the service of the church, bending willingly to the supremacy of the ten gods, and to the papacy.

For that, he was cut down. A tendril of light, snaking in the air, cutting flesh apart as easily as a knife cut through a paper strip.

They were trained strenuously for years. Malcolm himself trained in the sword, spear, bow, and shield from as young as eight, and horsemanship from ten. Many other skills, broader or more specific, all sinking into Malcolm to form a combatant. And after being put through additional training; to further refine his skills, to allow him to coordinate with teams of other paladins who he might have not known before. To grant him access to divine abilities.

He became one of the church's elite; a paladin. And after that, he was assigned a role in one of the fast-response teams.

Demons, daemons, and devils. Three different, very distinct - despite what people think - categories of fiends.

The first, nothing more than a force of destruction. Schoolyard bullies that lock people in lockers, except armed with abyssal powers and multiplied to create a ginormous army. To expect that they aren't capable of wit, thought, or scheming, is to be a fool. They connive and scheme, manipulate and lie, just as evil humans do. That 'schoolyard bully' is the best comparison, in terms of how they behave. Some bullies are stupid and strong, bashing their heads against a wall. Others, subtler, prefer to manipulate, toy with the emotions of others for their own pleasure. They were priority number one.

Daemons are slightly different. Not in nature, but in behavior. Rather than being satisfied by simple destruction and seeing their fellow sentients bent and hurt, they required power and satisfaction. They were personal; ambitious. Where a demon with only one arm might be content to cut yours off, a daemon would rather grow their own arm and use you to achieve that goal; then, once satisfied, leave you be. For that, they are priority number two. No doubt that they'd lie and manipulate, but they were no worse than greedy businessmen in diabolical guises.

Devils were different yet. Content to conform to a power structure, uncomfortable with lying. Honorable, in a way, he had to admit. You could trust a devil, as strange as that might be. If it said, 'I will do X,' then you can safely be at ease that it will do X, even if it might seem disadvantageous. They weren't above loop-holes, or 'the fine print,' but they never lied, and they didn't care for power as much as they cared about order; hence their amazing hatred for demons. Ironically, the church wasn't hesitant to ally with them during any larger incursions, as shown by history. For all of that, they were priority number three.

In that order of priority, were knights to slay fiends. A demon takes the highest priority, for it is a force of destruction. A devil takes the lowest priority because only someone willing would come into cahoots with it.

And besides - a soul that was sold to a devil isn't that bad, as it will become another one of them. Damned, yes. But at least honorable and reasonable, where the same cannot be said for daemons and demons.

As such, when a squad of response paladins is being prepared, they are told to respond to demons first, and devils last.

Even then, appearances of fiends are rare, and response paladins being called in is rarer yet. Usually, a garrison of guards can deal with infernal threats more or less just as well as they would if they were a squad of paladins. Add to it the fact that most towns and villages have a priest or monk to cleanse the area of any remaining taint from the corpse dissolving, or to get rid of the corpse if it didn't dissolve, for whatever reason.

When they got called in, it was usually serious things. Something too tricky for the locals to deal with. Smart devils that can fly to avoid swords, turn invisible or incorporeal to avoid attacks or detection altogether, or go to the Ethereal Plane outright.

Sometimes, they were too strong or intimidating; a Pit Fiend once got stuck in a village's barn somehow, and they had to go there to help him get out, from where he was content to return to his native plane.

They still had no idea how that happened, and neither did the Pit Fiend. According to his testimony, he just appeared in the barn for no reason. A failed summoning? They didn't conduct an investigation, maybe they should have.

Regardless, they were trained to deal with stronger fiends, rather than lots of weaker ones. But this?

This thing beheaded him instantly and didn't really care too much about holy magic. The amount of holy energy they washed him in should've disintegrated anything barring a Demon Lord. Instantly, it subverted almost all dimensional spellwork they tried using to cast it out and cared about exorcisms about as much as Malcolm cared about last year's snow.

He'd never seen a thing like that, and it beheaded him. Killed him. He solved the mystery of death, and it was scary.

In those moments, between being beheaded and being alive again, he felt... not free, but rather unchained. Like being in a dungeon with chains on you, and managing to take the chains off. The fact remains you're still in a dungeon. But without the negative associations of chains and dungeons.

He couldn't see, or hear. He could only vaguely feel the situation unfolding around him, in three-dimensional space. He knew there was a giant mass of darkness and red, oozing hate near him, and he tried to swim away from it, but he was locked in place.

Unfortunate, but the mass didn't care too much for him. In fact, he wasn't sure if it knew he was there. If it did, then it didn't care too much.

After what felt like minutes, Malcolm blinked and breathed in. He instantly sat up, and looked around, clutching his neck at the point of severance. It was seamless.

What he saw, he couldn't describe. A little girl - the Lord's daughter, he knew - stood there, hands clutching each other almost as if in prayer. As beautiful as a little angel, blue light left her hands in streams and entered the bodies of his comrades, mending them together with love.

He could tell it was love, because he felt loved.

In that moment, he could feel himself losing his faith. Losing some of his divine powers for unfaithfulness towards his gods, but he didn't care. He prayed towards the little girl, too overtaken by the love. Too raptured by the idea of returning it, in the only way that felt appropriate.

So he prayed.

###​

He escaped, thankfully.

What annoying persistence. But nothing new. Never nothing new. Repeating the same. How stupidly persistent.

Adversary reached out. A new plan. It bubbled beneath, but was rejected.

The new plan won't work anymore. Adversary would frown, if it could.

Something else to be accomplished. Adversary grinned at the opportunity.

Hollowness. A spring, a chance. It reached out and hollowed the opportunity.

Excellently done, if hastily. Time to act now.

###​

Pope Theomach - and he still wasn't sure how he felt about that title - sighed.

What better way to properly ruin his moment of good fortune than to walk in on it and tell him how to do his job?

"Yes, I understand," he told the cardinal.

The cardinals of Ten. To be honest, Julius hadn't bothered learning their names. He was told their names, but those never mattered, and he didn't care. The old men were cranky, annoying, even if their hearts were in the right place, and they refused to work with an eight-year-old orphan. How they made it to the rank of cardinal while this closeminded to the supernatural world surrounding them, he didn't know.

It seemed, almost, like the world was spiritually regressing. A worrying thought, given that the world they lived in depended on the spiritual to work. Technology didn't advance, because people had better alternatives, and if they didn't, they were told there are no alternatives or that they can't afford the alternatives.

He'd tried to raise the quality of life, for his part. Used the Blessing of Moradin to invent magical faucets, that could produce up to three liters of water daily, even without a power source, and ten to twenty times that amount if on a leyline or node.

Unfortunately, the faucets were hard to mass-produce for several reasons. First, materials. Secondarily, workers. Magical workers were required to produce magical items; artificers.

The gnome inventors in Warthford weren't terribly interested, and the dwarves shared their sentiment. Admittedly, one dwarven entrepreneur offered to pay for the blueprints, but the pope gave them to him for free in exchange for making the prices lower. They still wouldn't be available to be afforded by most commoners, so he retracted the deal. There was no point if it didn't serve people who needed it the most.

Human and elven mages? Bwah! Too arrogant to care. They were too preoccupied studying and bettering their abilities in the arcane to take thirty minutes out of their day building faucets.

Stupid idiots. They would die before making any significant progress in uncovering any secrets or enlightening themselves. And weren't even aware. Even if he told them - published a fucking manuscript explaining the accursed math of why (and Gods know he could do that, very easily,) they wouldn't make progress - they wouldn't listen.

The cardinal of Vortess said something, but Julius drowned his voice out in his thoughts.

Instead, he called upon the Blessing of Eterweiss. The goddess of magic, cosmos, planes, and cycles. The head honcho of the Pantheon of Ten.

The secrets of magic became clear as day, the link between Eterweiss and Julius feeding his soul knowledge about magic. The possible effects, like a list, entered his mind. While the methods - the experience of casting - entered his soul. He could cast most arcane and divine spells, of no specific alignment or element, at near-mastery now.

He lifted a mirror with a telekinetic pull, made it hover in front of his face.

A bored, young eight-year-old with short-cropped bleached hair looked back at him, eyes glowing blue due to actively using Eterweiss' Blessing.

He multiplied the mirror nine times and adjusted their size to make them smaller. Then, he cast a scrying spell on each one, and they showed the Lightbrook mansion like cameras. Various points with various cones of vision, depending on what his soul thought would most interest him.

He could have done this inside his mind, but he did it this way to annoy the cardinal of Vortess and make him leave with a growl. He didn't really care for what the man said.

Godness, these guys will try to assassinate me sooner or later, he realized belatedly, That, or strangle me with their own hands. Heh.

What he saw was good. It seems most of the staff woke up, and were running about the first and second floor like frantic geese. The Lady of the House was proceeding downstairs at a sedate, fairly terrified pace. He didn't blame her, seeing how much of the mansion was filled with scorch marks and burns. When she walked down, she saw that a butler was on his knees.

Wasn't he scorched to a crisp previously? Julius intended to use Belamere's Blessing to ask the butler's dead soul a few questions, then send him to his preferred afterlife as a reward, but he was alive again. And seemingly praying to someone. Curious.

He looked to another mirror, where he saw Timory Lightbrook and some man in armor helping him stand up. An older man, by the looks of it. A guard? A trainer? He called upon a sliver of Halathea's Blessing - not enough to interrupt the link with Eterweiss - and he received his answer. A mentor. Julius nodded sagely.

And then, there was the Lightbrook girl. Wow.

Following that abrupt fit of enlightenment, it seems Lazara healed everyone in the area. That must be how the butler survived. She also healed Julius' paladins.

How nice.

Therese, he called out to his secretary telepathically with Eterweiss' powers.

They weren't psionics - only magic - but they could still do that. Psionics were inferior to magic in many regards but more efficient in others. Nonetheless, his secretary - for a given definition of secretary, as the woman was a nun that he appointed at random, mostly out of boredom, to run errands - wasn't surprised. He'd done this many times.

Yes, Julius?

Please, send a bouquet of flowers to Lazara Lightbrook. Signed by me.

A moment. A beat for her to process the request.

Any particular flowers?

He shrugged and thought for a moment, then grinned once he realized the best option. Of course.

All of them. The more colors the better.

###​

Timory was hanging out with Matrim when it happened. They were casually talking about how Timory might improve his style, and Matrim himself admitted about learning from their conversation.

Belladonna ran up to them, frantic and breathing, then yelled there was a large presence on the second - she stopped to correct herself - the first floor of the mansion. A hostile one.

Needless to say, they ran across the grounds. For one time, Timory felt angry that the mansion grounds were so large and had so many gardens and courtyards that served almost no function, other than just being there to exist and take gardeners to maintain. He growled, applying as much enhancing magic to his legs as he could, in his mana-deprived state.

On the way there, they met up with Sylvester, who was going out, but returned once he felt the massive presence nearby.

What the hell is that thing? Timory thought.

Unlike seasoned magic users, his magical senses weren't well-developed.

He couldn't see into the Ether, or detect souls. He wasn't like a druid, connected to the world.

His sensory abilities were limited to very weak precognition, the ability to see through at most one wall, or one object no thicker than a meter, and the ability to see trajectories of attacks maybe a second before they occur - which was actually a good combo with his precognition.

He wanted to berate himself for not knowing better, but he didn't bother. He ran.

They heard distant explosions, causing Timory and the rest of the group to pause. Not stop, but definitely slow down for a moment as if to scan what's happening. The castle in front of them was unyielding, and they were about to enter its courtyard.

Another explosion, moments after. "Come on!" Sylvester said, running faster again. Everyone else followed.

Once they reached the mansion, it was clear as day that this was an attack. There was a hole in the damn wall of the first floor, and one of the guards was lying in a bush nearby, twitching. After Sylvester applied stabilizing magic, the group proceeded.

What Timory saw made his blood turn into ice. It made him hesitate.

His father, light coiling around him, on a cloud of debris and light.

On the opposite side, Lazara, clutching her wounds as she backed up to a wall next to the castle courtyard. Timory wanted to curse himself for not being more careful. For not being near her, for not choosing to go right instead of left, but it was unimportant.

In that moment, a group of paladins entered from the castle courtyard's direction. He wasn't about to bite a gift shark in the head, so he accepted as one of them moved to heal his little sister.

He looked to Matrim, and nodded. The two warriors moved, Timory leaping with a brief but powerful enhancement of his feet. The last of his mana was sucked out of his soul for that act, and he couldn't do anything else for now.

Matrim jumped onto the wall, bounded off of it, then grasped the cloud of debris and pulled at Lightbrook's feet, while Timory gave him a push at almost the exact same moment. Somehow, the Lord wasn't moved.

Timory realized, belatedly, that he was fighting his own father. His own possessed father, who snarled at him and tried to slap him away with his palm. Timory felt the danger and trajectory coming and ducked, then kicked his father in the shin to no effect.

So, instead, he stepped back and grabbed his father by the shoulder. Matrim understood the intent, leaping up and pushing Lightbrook in roughly the same area, and Timory bounded off, clutching his father.

They crashed several meters down, Timory being crushed under the weight and heat of his father's body, as he wasn't wearing his armor. One hit to the gut, very strong, by his father's elbow, was enough to stun him for several moments, while Lightbrook loaded the aura up and Timory felt its searing heat.

After that, everything exploded.

When Timory woke up, Matrim and his mother stood over him in the courtyard. Timory himself was shirtless, but feeling alright.

"Is... are father and Lazara alright?"

Matrim gave him a grave look. "Stand up. Let's go and find out."

Timory nodded as Matrim helped him to his feet. He put on his shirt - more of a tunic, really - and they walked back to where the fight took place. Lazara was there, kneeling, near Light- near father. And next to her, paladins, and some of the staff, praying.

Timory didn't care, and neither did his mother, as they both clutched Lazara. Timory hugged his sister as tightly as his muscle cramps allowed him, not allowing a single tear to leave his face.

He was relieved for her safety.

She was scared for him, that he'd die in the war, and yet here we are. He shook his head, deciding not to speak on the matter. His sister must have been traumatized by this. Trying to jape about it... was in poor taste.

He looked at his father, who was still breathing, and felt another stone leaving his shoulders.

"Thank goodness," he whispered, drowning out his mother's words. Something about being fine.

This wasn't fine.

Not fine at all.

They were hurt, and Lazara almost died. Timory wasn't sure how bad it was for him, when he got hit.

What matters is that they were hurt, when they shouldn't have been. The resolution was simple here:

Get stronger.

 

[Birdsie]

Interlude - Pope Theomach Claudius Pallas Julius Alcendence

###​

The nameless knight sat down, next to the dead, blue dragon.

He took off his helmet, letting himself breathe and ignoring the pain.

His left arm was sore and the tendons were damaged. Whenever he tried to straighten it, a spike of indescribable pain fired through his nerves, so he kept the arm bent.

After breathing for a few moments, he looked up at the cave ceiling and spoke the incantation he'd spoken what felt like hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Etched into his soul far more deliberately and strongly than any other mnemonic for magic. "Lords, I accept death, and return to my duty in eternal sleep."

At that incantation, his soul chirped with joy and channeled its magic into his chest. The streaks of magic converged on his heart... and caused it to burst.

Blood poured out, even as the magic tore away every artery, disconnected his spine, and cut off oxygen supply to the brain.

Death, again.

He didn't panic as he died, even though a small, instinctive part of his brain kept clutching to the primal instinct of wanting to survive. Of wanting to use magic to heal these wounds and live.

He lost that right to live normally eons ago, when he promised to do this before the universe.

The nameless knight's body faded away. He wasn't exactly nameless in life - he had a name, one that would be remembered in the books of history as a hero - but the name didn't matter to him. It wasn't who he was, and it was just temporary. One of a million, million myriad facets to one person.

His soul ascended to the Astral Plane, skipping several steps that were usually present when normal souls were concerned. His soul made its way through the Astral Reaches and found its spot within the root of the universe, resting and recuperating.

He accessed Eterweiss and Halathea, then began to cycle through a list of threats.

He'd made this deal with the universe itself, when the stars were young. To protect her, and in exchange, all of the power of the gods would be his to carry out his task. But once the deal was made, there was no backing out of it, ever. He was the universe's toy.

The nameless hero, forgotten by time, forced into a cycle of reincarnation to wherever was most pressing.

There was always work to do. Always places to be.

There was always somewhere that was in danger; a place where hundreds of people were about to die, if no one sufficiently competent interposed between them and the source of the threat. That's him - the nameless hero's duty. Guard the balance of the universe, and protect its people when the balance is safe.

He opened up his senses to the primary set of Material Planes and sent a high-intensity precognitive scan over them, and a low-intensity scan over the rest of the planes, both Material and Astral. He could see up to fifteen years into the future on the former, and up to five in the latter cases.

What he saw was... disturbing.

On Gaia, some sort of war cooked and threatened to cover the world. A world war, commandeered by some dark entity. He accessed Tiamat's power, then reached out to the dark entity, trying to seize it.

Pure greed manifested itself and shot through the Astral Plane like a lance or a grasping tentacle; like righteous divine wrath smiting its way through the collective unconscious, lashing out towards the creature. To claim it for himself, if possible, and to destroy it if not.

Worthless. The creature detected the attack and had very complicated defenses. Its patterns were complex, like nothing he'd ever seen before.

The nameless hero, frankly, balked at it. Its signature was unlike a fiend. In fact, its signature was blank, like it shouldn't exist.

It was like a program. Like software that was clearly supposed to work on a different operating system, or without an operating system. Highly adaptable to any paradigm of reality, and its goal...

It was a virus, meant to destroy universes.

The nameless hero frowned, if only mentally. His duty was clear as day. He accessed All of Ten, then initiated another reincarnation cycle. Even as his soul sought to reverse-engineer as much of fate using precognition as it could, he accessed Halathea and began to plot, while simultaneously opening a channel to communicate with the Gods and calling for a meeting regarding the issue. They usually weren't interested in the loss of life if it was limited to a single Material Plane.

In fact, loss of life didn't bother them at all, and neither did an asymmetry in cosmic balance unless it was great.

But maybe they'd listen this time.

###​

Birth. Those early years of life, gaining experience. The formative years.

They were always slow, in his perspective. He'd reincarnated so much that if he was to point to a single affinity for magic his soul had, 'reincarnation' would be it. By his fourth day in the world, he had full memories of his past lives and of who he was.

He could control his growth; go from an infant to an adult in weeks. But he didn't. This situation required subtlety or at least a degree of it. If he grew up that quick, it'd draw eyes. Mages, curious about him. The church, wary of him.

That creature, desiring to get rid of him.

People would notice if he was competent early in life. Too competent. But maybe that was good; he could feign smugness, being out of his element. That creature was too powerful to defeat on its own, so he'd have to build up a power base with which to act. An army of resources and manpower.

He sighed, and opened his mouth to let the nun feed him another spoonful of oatmeal.

###​

Seven years of relative incontinence, playing soccer with several boys, pretending the girls have cooties, and impressing the local villagers with a sliver of his abilities out of boredom.

At least, that farmer was thankful for all his help. Summoned wind elementals could shoot scythes of air for dozens of meters of range, cutting down kilograms of wheat with each shot. Then, once the whole field was cut, a little bit of air-pushing into carts - and bam. A week's work, done in a day. The whole village fed.

Needless to say, he became something of a local hero. Everyone said he'd probably become an adventurer, and Julius was willing to concede that's probably what would have happened if he didn't have more pressing world-threatening issues to deal with.

One night, sitting alone in his room, he reached out to connect with all Ten of the primary deities he usually had to work with.

It's time, he told them, then went to sleep.

###​

The cardinals - or what survived of them - were pleasant enough, but patronizing. Even though he could fly and shoot lightning from his ass, they didn't seem terribly impressed.

"Alright, I want full authority by the time I'm ten. Until then, I have emergency powers to issue orders to up to five chosen squads of unaligned paladins, two chosen squads of aligned paladins per deity, eighty-five clerics of any chosen deity; or unaligned, any oracles working for the church, and any nuns and unempowered priests working for the church. I also reserve the rights to conduct every fifth sermon in the Basilica."

"Seventh," the cardinal of Halathea said resolutely.

Julius nodded and smiled. "Fine. It's a deal," he said and extended his hand.

The cardinal of Eterweiss sighed and extended his own, but Julius pulled back and thoughtfully said, "Actually, you know what?"

Everyone in the room groaned collectively.

"I want a cool name," he stated. "Decius. Or Decimus. Deciter?"

"No," the cardinal of Vortess replied. "My goodness, no! You're not doing that, boy!"

"Hmph. What other name, then?"

"Theomach?" the cardinal of Corellon absently proposed.

"Theomach, yeah" - "Theomach sounds good" - "Let's go with that" - "Yes, excellent," came various responses from the cardinals.

Theomach - apparently - sighed and shook on the deal with the cardinal of Eterweiss. "That name is lame, but I'll make the concession."

And lame it was. But perhaps that was helpful - seeming incontinent would help them think they had power over him, while, in reality, he spied on their private affairs from the safety of his lounge and planned around their plans, and machinated around their machinations.

Bribery is very easy when you can read the police officer's mind and pull the subtext out of his head.

###​

Problem with bribery is that, usually, when you have the authority over someone, direct and true; you don't need to resort to it. As it is, that wasn't always the case. Authority is subjective, and reaching to your subordinates' belts doesn't help with it. Being a smug little shit doesn't help either.

Thing is, problems started cropping up.

"It isn't really a big deal, or anything," he said, at the expense of the gaping paladins. "To put it into perspective, the worst thing that could happen is that you die."

"That doesn't help," one of them said.

"Why not?" Julius queried, raising a brow at his reaction. "You'll go straight to your chosen afterlife, or you will not. In the latter scenario, you get to keep people from dying. It seems like a win-win, doesn't it?"

Another paladin folded his arms. "I don't know how I feel about dying early. I have things to do, matters to attend to. Places to be."

"I find your lack of faith disturbing," the pope answered, feeling someone in black armor sneeze behind him. He closed his eyes and shook his head. "It's not like I'm some kind of tyrant. What I'm using to convince you isn't resolve and an attempt at manipulating your sense of self-identity by proposing alternative systems of value. I'm actually manipulating you, by bringing into the forefront, the things that really matter."

"Like what? Like digging a fucking Pit Fiend because it got stuck in a barn? Get real," another replied with a scoff.

"Wow. Talking that way to an eight-year-old boy is one thing," Julius replied, "but I'm the pope. Doesn't that do anything for you guys?"

"You're a demon in human skin," another, more aggressive and silent replied. A quiet guy that usually hung around the back, standing at the front right now. "I do not know how they allowed you to become a pope, but I wouldn't have."

"The gods agree with me," Julius replied. He drew on the Blessing of Halathea and calculated for a second or two. "Okay, I'll cut you a deal. Take care of this for me, and I'll fund you a visit to Zorpathion's Tower. Sound good?"

The paladins shared anxious looks. Their sergeant drew in air, then sighed and folded his arms in surrender. "Fine."

Julius smiled in satisfaction at bribery well done.

###​

Sebastian Vahki. Local hero, adventurer. Flies around on a high-speed, high-altitude enchanted broom. Curious guy.

"Your Excellency," Sebastian drawled with a smidge of respect, quirking an eyebrow at the youth. "Why did you call me here?"

His voice was pretty. If he reincarnated as a girl, he'd probably fall for him. Granted, that would be reverse pedophilia and downright unethical. He banished the thought and smiled at Sebastian, while drawing on Halathea's Blessing. Julius cleared his throat. "How do you feel about sharing the stage, Sebastian? Can I call you Sebastian? I'll call you Sebastian, okay? Okay. Okay? Okay. Great."

Sebastian blinked, then opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Julius. "Actually, Sebas, I hope you don't mind, but I've taken the liberty of peering into your memories."

"W-what? My memor-"

"Nothing drastic, I assure you. A glance, to see who you are as a person. And, Big S. Can I call you Big S? I'll call you Big S, okay? Okay. Okay? Okay. Great. So, Big S, I'm thinking that you're just what my new, secret organization needs. A secret agent of sorts."

Sebastian blinked. "No."

"Why not, Big See? Can I call you Big See? I'll call you Big See, okay? Okay. Okay? Oka-"

"Shut. Up. You're so annoying. This meeting is a waste of time; I'm leaving."

Julius smiled politely. "Goodbye."

Sebastian scoffed and left, muttering, 'unbelievable.'

Excellent. The idea that I'm smug, annoying, and incompetent is planted in his mind now.

Julius reached for the Blessing of Eterweiss, then adjusted the Blessing to focus on fate-related spells, and chose a specific strand that connected him and Sebastian. Thin and fragile, the pope fine-tuned it just the tiniest bit, to make a single option of the timeline more likely than the others. Satisfied with his work, he reclined and conjured a mirror of scrying.

Let's see how the barn paladins are doing.

###​

"Your Excellency," the spy bowed, giving him the letter. The pope quirked an eyebrow.

"Who is this from?"

"Lazara Lightbrook. She was asking about you, hoping to avoid notice, I believe," he replied.

"Tell me about this Lightbrook," he commanded, looking at the letter and quirking an eyebrow. His first thought was, this woman needs to sort out her priorities.

"Born eleven years ago to Pholion and Daevina Lightbrook, Your Excellency. She is homeschooled, training in magic and combat. Presumably, she has the same talent for the elements of Light and Earth as her father. Her brother, Timory Lightbrook, seventeen, is slated to be the next Head of the House."

Julius nodded, half-listening, half-reading. "She's only, what, three years older than me?" he asked, as if to verify.

"Yes."

Julius, once again, nodded, seemingly satisfied. He looked up, giving the letter back. "The fact that she doesn't have a crush on me is obvious. She's trying to snoop around and gather easy intel, but I wonder why? She's only eleven. Very unusual, that. For children to gather so much information and spy on people."

If the spy standing in front of the pope, or the twelve other spies standing off to the side who've already made their reports, thought this statement was hypocritical - they said nothing.

"Alright, I'll write her up a response. Dismissed."

At that, the spies flooded out of the chamber one after another, disappearing into the shadows. The pope grinned to himself and took out his favorite inkwell, his finest quill, and the greatest scroll of parchment he could afford, then began to write gleefully.

Once his work was done, and he made sure it was exquisite, he enchanted the letter. A simple spell, but quite undetectable, to return a basic scan of information on whoever reads it. As well as warn him if there is any danger in their near future; roughly the next three days.

His work done, the pope called in his secretary to hear her report on how his little garden was doing.

There's always work to do. Always places to be.

 

[Birdsie]

Interlude - Pholion Lightbrook

###
1290, 12th of Harvesthaul​

"Don't jape about this," Lightbrook said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Daevina smirked in a catlike manner. "I thought my future husband brave."

"Courage mustn't be married to stupidity," he replied confidently, with a sting of venom. The implications, the third layer of the statement, is what mattered: I'm courageous already, but you're just being stupid. Why are we getting married, again?

"Dear me, if a show of faith is stupidity, then Lady Agria must be disappointed in you," Daevina answered, not letting his statement get to her. She folded her arms, looking to her right as if there was an interesting bug sitting on a branch of the bushes. "All I'm asking is a little show of faith. That you'll do what's necessary."

"By putting myself in unnecessary danger?" he pressed, raising an eyebrow in amusement. "You appear to have it backwards, Daevina. Your lead is hardly gold: you're as dense as ever."

"Oh, a good one," she said, turning back to him with a smile. "I'll have to teach my daughter, that one."

After a moment of silence, Daevina held her hand out to the left. "So, will bitch grow a pair and go in?"

He sighed, then raised his hand. "Agria's light," he muttered, and his hand cast a faint glow. He approached the cave sheepishly, swapping balance from one foot to the other as he leaned forward to peer in.

"I'm not so sure about this," he said, narrowing his eyes to see if there was anything in the darkness. "I don't see it."

"You have to go in deeper, love," she replied, in a sultry tone, as hot as the desert sands.

Lightbrook thought on the idea for a moment, his eyes raising to consider. He thought and thought, on the prospect of entering a known kobold cave, to retrieve a stupid bracelet for his girlfriend. He blinked several times, sincerely mulling the idea over, then sighed.

"Agria's light, cast yourself into earthen stone." The glow in his hand diminished, ligaments of burning solar plasma coalescing into an acorn-sized ball. The ball solidified into a glowstone, purple on one side, and more orange on the other, almost like an opal.

Lightbrook chucked it into the cave, letting it guide the way into the dragon's clutches.

###​

Pholion Lightbrook never thought that his life was easy.

As an important agricultural area, the Lightbrook province had key importance in keeping the kingdom's granaries stocked. He was the scion of that and the administrator of everything that concerned it. It's hard enough with the politicking, intrigues, and backstabbing of other nobles who'd love to get their lecherous claws on his land. Always, he had to take care of this alone, while maintaining a veneer of civility. But now? His daughter was being targeted, and that was unacceptable.

Under the cover of the night, he walked the capital's desolate streets, in the slums, and approached a particular office, unaware he was being followed in the rain.

He turned the corner, left, into a narrow street of cobblestone, surrounded by tall wooden houses and service shops. Off to the side, a figure was waiting for him.

"Pholion, how are you?" asked the cloaked man, hood covering most of his white hair, but not concealing his face. Pholion recognized him immediately and approached, shaking hands as a greeting.

"Gods know, not well," he said. "Not well indeed, Anton."

"Come in," Anton said, opening the door for him.

Pholion entered, pulled off his hood, then began undoing the lapels of his coat. "Nobody must know that I'm here. My family believes I am asleep, or at home, at the very least."

Anton's office was small, cluttered. There was a door immediately to the right, coat hangers to the left. A staircase going upwards on the right side, with a door at the end. To the left of the staircase was the office itself; several drawers with odd objects on them, scattered. Framed images (photographs, he thought they were called,) folders and indexes, and papers. Several inkwells and quills, and even the more-expensive pens that didn't require inkwells. Some plants in the corners, in small clay pots.

And finally, the desk itself, in the middle, with chairs on both sides. Mostly clear, save for a teapot, teacups, a small glass container with colorful blobs inside it, and a lot of papers.

"How did you get to the capital so quickly?" Anton asked, pulling his hood off and closing the door. Pholion allowed himself a better look at his old friend's face - he looked between tired and bored, but on a deeper level than just as a mood. He wasn't satisfied with any of this, clearly. With the office and career.

You have it easy if life bores you, Pholion thought, pulling his coat off.

"Teleportation. I know a guy who handles that."

"Mm," Anton intoned absentmindedly, as he pulled off his cloak and hung it next to the entrance, then moved behind his desk and sat down. Pholion did the same with his coat and turned to follow, sitting in a crotchety, wooden chair.

"Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee? Candy?"

Pholion shook his head. "Not today. I pray to Agria that it is not too late," he replied with a heavy voice. "I require your services."

"What bothers you?" Anton asked, quirking an eyebrow even as he opened the lid of a small glass container and retrieved a piece of honey-yellow candy.

"My daughter has been having strange dreams of danger. I've asked around with my contacts, and they agree! One of the best prophets in the country told me something bad is going to happen, Anton. I need... I need your help. I'm ready to pay," he said, giving him a grave look.

The mercenary stopped moving for a moment, his bored expression slipping into thoughtfulness, as he began to understand the gravity of the situation. He put down the candy he was about to munch on, then took a second to consider.

He tapped his finger against the armrest uncomfortably, shifting position in his chair. "How much? I'm risking my life. I want to have a guarantee, and then tell me what you want."

Pholion reached into his belt, then pulled off a pouch and laid it on the desk, pushing it with two fingers. "Twenty platinum. Thirty more, after this job is done."

Anton took the pouch in his hand, opened it with his thumb and looked inside. He stared, and if the amount impressed him, he didn't show.

Anton dropped the pouch onto his desk, then ate the honey candy and munched thoughtfully for a minute, his eyes changing which corner of the room they looked at several times.

When he was done, he gulped and sighed, grabbing his forehead and rolling his eyes. Humorously, he said, "Oh, man, Lightbrook. Is being a pain in the ass genetic in your family? Fine, I'll help. Fucking hell, I don't think I'd sleep well if I knew your daughter is in danger and I can help it."

"Good," Pholion said, letting a smile sneak onto his face.

"What kind of danger are we talking about? A demon?" He looked at Lightbrook's face.

Pholion shook his head. "Some kind of spirit. The prophet was vague, said it, 'evaded his sight.'"

"What a pain in the ass," Anton growled. He let out a throaty hum of annoyance. "I can't prepare if I don't know what I'm fighting. Have you warded the house, at least?"

"My mansion? Of course."

"At least there's that, then," Anton murmured. He blinked, then looked at Pholion's face, which suddenly shifted, with barely contained fear and stress on it. Anton scratched his head, asking, "Did something happen? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"The capital does have ghosts, does it, Anton?" Pholion's eyes purposefully avoided a spot above Anton's head, even as he blinked several times in quick succession. An indicator.

The mercenary's heart skipped a beat, in complete understanding. His hand reached down under the desk, while his eyes narrowed.

It happened in a flash. Anton leaped left, out of the way, rolling with his jump and springing to his feet in one motion, while the specter that was in the wall behind him swung its foot-long talons and left several sharp lines on the back of his chair. Pholion stood, then moved back and away from the danger, ready to bolt out of the building at any given moment.

The monster was almost human, like a gray robe was animated underwater, half-transparent, with a nondescript face and two red eyes. Its teeth were rotten, yet sharp like a shark's. It had claws instead of normal hands, each talon a good foot of length, and as sharp as a razor.

The specter let out a ghastly wail, then floated in Anton's direction with another swing. The mercenary hopped to dodge, then brandished his sword.

The edge of the blade trailed through the specter's neck effortlessly but did nothing save annoy it. Anton jumped back, then held out his blade to Pholion. "Imbue me."

Pholion didn't nod, but acted, raising his hand over Anton's sword. He incanted quickly, "Lady Agria, act as the mercy. Lady Agria, act as the protector. Imbue this sword with the power to act as your vessel." Anton's blade began to glow with a coruscant aura.

By the time the spell was done, the specter was moving again, but this time Anton was prepared. He ran towards it, slid underneath it, then rose and spun with the attack.

His light-blade cleaved the ghastly monster in two halves, severing the ectoplasm shell. The specter slowed down, turning with painful and strained movement, but Anton swung again, and this time it was finished; its two halves were split again, this time vertically.

The apparition flickered, blinking in and out of existence until it screamed and dissipated into a fine, gray mist.

"Is it dead?"

"It was already dead," Anton replied non-committally, rolling his shoulders and relaxing them. "That specter is conjured by the soul, which is on the Ethereal Plane. It'll take a day or two for it to reconstruct. I need to go get an exorcist to send it over to the... ah, other side. Unless that attack scared the soul enough that it ran there on its own, which would be pretty funny."

Pholion shot him an unamused look.

"Right, right. Sorry. Anyway, seeing that whoever is trying to kill your daughter already has eyes on me, I'll take the job. Under one condition." Anton sat in his chair, sheathing the sword and raising a single finger.

"What is it?" Pholion asked, moving in closer.

"On top of what you paid; this month's rent."

Pholion sighed. "Fine."

Anton smiled. "Let's discuss the job, then."

###
1290, 12th of Harvesthaul​

What is my life, even? Lightbrook asked, huffing as he ran.

Several creatures screeched in the darkness behind him, running after with their scaly feet.

Something swished next to his ear, then impacted the stone. A wicked-looking javelin, with a jagged edge.

Fuck me! Fuck-me-fuck-me-fuck-me!

"Agria's light! Your disciple's palm, four cardinal directions, and a point of space! I call upon light! I call upon water! Create a weapon, so that I may smite danger where it appears!" he chanted, knowing it revealed his location, but not caring too much at this point.

He clutched the bracelet in his left hand, raising his right and stopping just for a moment. His palm glowed with furious orange, purple, and red lights swirling between his fingers.

He released, firing a ray of solar napalm, eliciting draconic screams.

He focused on creating a fence of flames to separate himself from the kobolds, moving his hand in a slow horizontal swish, then back to its starting point, then back; layering the fiery light on top of itself several times. Once he considered it sufficient, he bolted.

To his surprise, the aura of light remained in his right hand, prepared for another use. He felt it building up, very slowly. Maybe it'd reach his shoulder in several minutes.

Pholion always had an affinity for light and earth, like his ancestors. Fire and water were secondary specialties, unique to him, which he only discovered recently. Applying water's fluidity to his particular brand of light resulted in what he could only describe as something similar to liquid light. Throw fire into the equation, and he received a substance similar to plasma in many ways, like the sun's surface, but weaker a hundred times.

He ran up the small slope near the cave's entrance, digging his fingers into the earth and between the nooks in stone, climbing with his feet as much as he did with his hands.

Once on the surface, he tossed the stupid bracelet to Daevina then yelled, "Run!"

She gaped at him, then heeded his advice with a yelp, after a javelin almost struck her in the foot.

"What did you do?!" she asked, looking back.

"I found your bracelet, you crazy bitch! Why did you give it to a bunch of kobolds?"

"I didn't give it to them! I told you it fell in!"

The sex better be worth it, Lightbrook thought grimly, gritting his teeth.

He slid to a stop and spun, looking at the cave entrance, now distant, where kobolds were spilling out. Like spiders from a mouse hole.

He charged the light in his palm, let it build up. He could more or less tell how the damage grew as he baked the attack: each second was another meter of radius the grenade would consume, and every third second was another half-centimeter of flesh that would be fried completely if they were human.

But these were kobolds.

"Why did you stop?" Daevina asked, but saw what Lightbrook was doing. Instinctively, she hid behind him.

He waited five seconds, baking the attack. The light swirled, yearning for a release. Purple and orange fire danced around his hand, beginning to release a kettle's whistle of steam, only with rustling and burning. The air began to distort, as a heatwave expanded outwards around his body.

He waited five more seconds, letting it cook. Just to be safe, he collected the plasma into his palm again. Concentrated it, making it denser. An orb of screaming fury in his palm, expanding, reaching out with unstable tentacles of glittering, colorful light.

Just a bit more...

Javelins began to whistle in the air around them, one almost hitting Pholion in the knee. He could feel Daevina pulling at him from behind, but he rooted himself firmly to the earth and grinned. Two, three, four, five seconds.

Pholion released the attack.

###​

Adventurers, mercenaries. Overlooked, but useful tools for law and order.

They often travel, taking jobs and seeking riches. Pholion knew at least two nobles who'd started their houses with the riches they got from adventure, and of at least a hundred ancient houses that used to be made by ex-adventurers, but fell, because they didn't know how society actually works.

Not everything can be solved with swords and arrows? Who knew?

Lightbrook shook his head, raising his glowing palm and chanting the prayer of warding that he'd been using all night, "Thy providence of Agria, and her chains that bind thee. This earth, as the dungeon, and this earth, as the guard; this earth the provider. Earth, source, and mother; come and settle upon this blessed land and protect it - from the shadow - and the depravity of the Abyss: fathers and sons of darkness. Evil incarnates and manifestations of discord. The madness of the ancients and revelations of wickedness. Lady Agria, have mercy."

The other clerics behind him lifted their arms and chanted in chorus, "Lady Agria, have mercy."

He chanted in response, "Lady Agria, have mercy."

They, again. "Lady Agria, have mercy."

"Lady Agria, have mercy."

"Lady Agria, have mercy."

Finally, together. "Have mercy and protect us."

A square of land in front of him, a field, maybe a square kilometer, began to cast a glow. The wheat looked golden, emitting phosphorescent light for several seconds, while sparks of energy similar to fireflies lifted off into the night's sky. It lasted several seconds, then faded.

"This part is safe. Let's move," Lightbrook ordered. He whistled, and heard a distant neigh, as his horse galloped up to him.

They had many, many more places to visit before the entire province was protected, and they could only do this so often every night. There was a chance that someone would dispel a part of the abjurations, but Lightbrook would detect that, and when he did, he'd move in to patch up the hole in their defenses.

He wouldn't let his daughter come to harm.

###
1290, 12th of Harvesthaul​

Lightbrook breathed, chest heaving up, down, up, and down again, as he used his elbows to sit up. Once his thinking returned, and his ears weren't ringing anymore, he grinned.

He laughed, a burst of childish laughter, even though he was well into his teens.

"I am never going to marry you!" he said as if realizing. As if he finished a mathematical equation and came to the conclusion it carried. "Not for all the riches in the world. Not if this kind of exposure is attached. I think I'm traumatized for life; you're a danger magnet!" He looked at her, grinning from ear to ear, then stopped laughing once he saw her face.

Daevina was also breathing but didn't look very happy.

"Shut. Up," she said, spitting out glowing purple liquid, with tiny yellow stars in it. She looked at him. "Blah! What the hell did you do to my spit, freak?"

"Hahaha! Your tongue's purple!" he said, shaking his head. "I don't know, I guess that's lingering mana or something. It painted your spit."

Neither teenager deemed it necessary to point out the small, blasted crater of blackness and charred bodies, only twenty meters away from them both.

"You're a freak, Lightbrook," she said, lying back down, letting her brown hair spread across the earth. "A crazy, powerful, purple-painting freak, with a penchant for explosions."

He grinned, then laughed out, not stopping. "That's- That's a good one!"

"What's so funny?" she jabbed, looking at him with a frown.

He stopped his laugh, to swallow. "Me? Crazy? You're the one who told me to go in there, and I told you it was suicide."

"You went in anyway," she pointed out the anomaly in his deduction.

"Right," Pholion said, still amused, standing up. He offered her his hand, and she accepted with a sigh. "I change my mind, you know? That was scary at first, but thrilling. Damn. I want to do that again."

"You should become an adventurer," Daevina jabbed, flicking several hairs behind an ear. She began brushing off dirt from her dress.

He shook his head. "I did protect you from the kobolds, I suppose, but I'm out of mana, I think. Going by the headache, at least. I'm not sure I'd be any good as an adventurer. As a bodyguard, maybe? But I'm a noble already, so there's no point. I can sit back and collect tax dividends."

She smiled at that, letting herself snort.

Pholion began to walk in the direction of his mansion, and Daevina followed. "If I do end up marrying you? Please, if I ever stop being this excitable, punch me in the face."

"I always want to punch you, anyway," she said. "Most of the time, it's subtext, though. This would be the first time you outright asked me to do that."

"That felt great, in so many ways. I think I'm born anew. I can't believe how austere I was about this! This is great!"

She raised an eyebrow at his excitement. "Next time I find a deadly monster, I'll be sure to point you in its direction. So you can solo it, and protect me from it." She smiled at that last statement, looking forward.

He smiled back, nodding. "I can take on anything you throw at me. How's your bracelet?"

Daevina smirked, showing him her left wrist. A small, golden bracelet, with a green gem. "You're not so spineless after all, Lightbrook."

"I try," he said, then stopped her by putting his arm on her midriff. A burning branch fell on the ground in front of her half a second later.

"Oops. I should probably tell my dad that the forest is burning," he said.

"Agreed."

###​

empty...hollow...hollow..hollow
What is my name?
hollow...empty...
FeeLS SO HolLOW
hollowhollow...hollow..hollow
Who am I?...Why am I here?hollow...
empty...anger..hollow.....crushed...
I...just want.hollow.ed.. to;hollow..protect.empty..you...​

 

[Birdsie]

Chapter 15: Refraction

###
26th Goldleaf, 1310​

The past day had mostly been spent resting and recuperating after the attack. In the evening, servants began cleaning up the damage, and Lady Lightbrook already commissioned a crew to repair the mansion.

Lazara's mother decided that on the first of Harvesthaul, they'd be making their way to the capital to have the sit-down with the pope. Then, they'd come back to the province to collect the taxes and pay their own tithe to the Kingdom, before Timory went off.

Her life had become such a mess lately. It was hard to get excited over anything anymore.

Magic? There was little novelty to it. Sure, discovering new spells was exciting, but the notable challenge that came with the study of the basics was gone. The moment she looked at something and connected the idea of 'magic' to it, her brain provided shadowy tokens as options. Vague ideas of possibilities, sometimes outlined for convenience if they approached familiarity. Elemental light or fire, most often.

It was kind of fun, she had to admit. Imbuing light with 'hardness' was actually rather basic, as far as conceptual elementalism went, but she enjoyed it.

Where most wizards were satisfied to evoke thunder waves or fire bolts of magic from their palms, she could become a human flashlight, except the flashlight punches whatever it lights up.

Watching Timory struggling to get close as she pushed him away by glowing like a lamp was hilarious, for the first ten minutes.

Her glasses were free of any traps, fortunately. Not even the Adversary was that shrewd, apparently.

At this point, fixing the glasses was a formality. An afterthought. Some scratching along the lenses was buffed out in minutes using the aid of earth magic, and then it took less than a minute to give them a perfect shine with a rag and an alchemical cleaning product for glass. She expected it to take half an hour, from past experience, but her brain would no longer give her the satisfaction.

Identity, the sense of self, is a fickle thing. It depends mostly on one's self-schema, on ego; conscious responses adapting to an environment or a pattern of situations. Like software and algorithms, only for the brain.

Generally, a human can tell apart oneself from other humans.

The tricky part, the fickleness, comes in past lives. At least in Lazara's case.

Was she Lily? Was she Lazara Lightbrook. She felt like Lazara Lightbrook, but was this because of her memories?

If she remembered the rest of her past life, would her sense of self change? Would she stop identifying as Lazara Lightbrook, and instead become Lily? Would she become neither? Both? Something in between?

The concept of a 'Lizara' was scary and alien, like an eldritch concept digging vacuous roots into her brain and sucking on the munchy electric signals passed between her neurons, causing them to offer feedback in the form of utter existential horror.

Does it matter, at this point?

Lazara or Lily. One or the other. Both or neither.

In a way, it was funny. It was almost like a rainbow from refraction.

If white light goes in a wave through a prism, it will collapse and subsequently break down into the full range of visible light; a rainbow of colors.

Wasn't that similar? Wasn't the existence known as the Savior simply a white light, with Lazara and Lily being its two flavors; both forming the full image, but neither capable of independently forming that? Was being a form of light her fate, or was it just that her mind wandered towards this pattern, as a way of finding self-comfort, or trying to fit herself into her worldview?

In a way, that itself was an attempt at self-identification.

And frankly, the idea that light was a part of her identity. That no matter what form she'd take - Lily, Lazara, Savior - that she'd still be defined by light in some form or another? It was comforting in its own way.

And poetic, in other ways. If an absence of light is darkness, then would an absence of her be the Adversary? If he was hollowness, emptiness; a nonexistence. Then was she the light to fill that void, and those gaps and cracks in creation?

It certainly seemed that way.

And maybe that wasn't comforting, but at least she could attribute it to be something that defined her. A little, stable bit of her own identity.

###​

New priorities were in the order of study.

Given the recent events, the spiritual vector of the damage her father suffered, and the apparent ineffectiveness of all the wards and abjurations that he'd toiled to place - Lazara had to take matters in her own hands. It'd be good practice for the future, at least.

And given that in her new state she could affect souls - but by Eterweiss, she swore not to abuse this privilege and be careful with such a forbidden and sacred domain of existence - it was only right she attempt to learn her new borders.

Belladonna, apparently noting that Lazara had achieved an enlightened (no pun intended,) state, decided the eleven-year-old surpassed her in skill. Was it a professional pride? Refusing to work with a callow youth due to their innate talent, even if they lacked the experience and knowledge?

She didn't dare think of her teacher as shallow. There had to be more to it.

Definitely not ignorance, though. Fear? Fear of what? Fear of butterflies made out of infrared radiation? Fear of a communication system that decrypts light into speech? Fear of... growth? Fear of knowledge?

This warranted investigation, if nothing else.

Regardless, she was to study on her own, and progress on her own. Without oversight and the advice of experience, things progressed at a snail's pace. No one to throw ideas and theories against to confirm their credibility, and no one to recommend reading the material, could really slow down development and growth. She'd never supposed true advancement was this reliant on a competent teacher.

Still, she could adapt. It was one of her talents. Just like light can be adapted to any length and subsequently color, to act as a carrier for a different form of force or concept in the mind, she could adapt to many situations and environments.

A lack of teacher was one.

Even then, she was armed with the venerable library of books that the Lightbrooks have collected over some odd six-hundred years of their existence. The library was slim and limited, but at least versatile. For that, she was thankful.

The records of her family indicated that the Lightbrooks' wealth actually very slowly deteriorated in the last two-hundred-years, coming to a kind of golden peak around the turn of the century, and beginning existence as a house around six-hundred years ago; not long after the kingdom itself was formed. Right now, the deterioration was beginning to even out, and they'd probably see a rise if Lazara decided to make yearly rounds to bless the grounds and collect extra tax from the peasants in the next decades.

The Lightbrooks were an old house; not scholars as one would believe, but farmers, who used the solar light and the druidic blessings of Agria and mashed them together to form a uniquely appropriate form of magecraft unique to them as nobility and as mages. In a way, it was their particular trait. The one 'concept' closely associated with the house.

Their attribute, or their identity: their guidance and oversight; guardianship, in a way; made the peasantry in the province wealthier than anywhere else. And with that wealth and more valuable land came higher taxes, so the Lightbrooks were as prosperous as it gets. Even now, the family was easily among the ten richest in the country, possibly the top five.

Since magic was so damn profitable, it only made sense they'd at least try to collect books on magic. Even if not their own brand, they might have been useful to their descendants.

And boy were they! Lazara, if she ever met her ancestral grandfathers and grandmothers, would make sure to kiss them all on the cheek for this splendor she was blessed with.

A whole tome about souls and spirituality, written by a former archmage one century ago. It came from an expert with high-grade expertise and since it was only from the last century, it wasn't dated either - though it may be purposefully vague as to deter mages who wanted to perform experiments of doubtful moral veracity.

Still, she was thankful. This tome she held was probably more expensive than a house in the capital, plus land tax for the said house, of ten years. She bit into the book harder than Pyldret bit into Matrim's dry sense of humor.

Souls and spiritual systems were an alternate layer of the world; the other side of the coin that is existence. Though the author mentioned it was less of a coin, and more of a slope, or spectrum.

There are beings that are as material as possible and ones as spiritual as possible, but it's impossible to be truly unspiritual or truly immaterial. As long as something exists, it has at least a grain of both in itself. The line gets blurry in some cases, and can be very aberrated in the case of necromantic experiments.

Half-ghosts half-zombies weren't unheard of in the eastern lands; malformed monsters made of ectoplasm and looted corpses to create terrifying bestial soldiers.

The writer had the displeasure of being accosted by a necromancer's soldiers of this category when traveling, and they intended to turn him into one of their ranks. The archmage objected. Then the necromancer came to check what the ruckus was about and decided that the archmage's soul would be an interesting thing to see on his dinner plate. The archmage strongly objected, and proceeded to unleash a count of several dozens of magical missiles in short succession to deal with the spiritual sociopath.

After a short warning about this nature of research, and the disclaimer he purposefully won't go into detail, the writer begins to explain the actual mechanics of souls. Some if it, Lazara already knew; meridians, dantians, mental connections. Others, she didn't know; psychic links, extraordinary effects, personal internal worlds, space-folded dimensionality and its functions, and the 'weaving expertise.'

Apparently, souls gained legitimate experience, as they were used. A mage who cast a hundred ice spells would keep casting them at lower and lower costs each time, as his soul learned to do it more efficiently. There was even a point where it'd stop costing anything, where the soul would learn to just snap its fingers and the universe would obey for free at no cost. In some cases, this meant actually creating matter out of literally nowhere. Not even converting magical energy into it, just creating things from nothing.

It was kind of mind-boggling, and rare, but it was possible.

Even if it wasn't the same ice spell each time, a lot of the experience still carried over to other spellwork of the same branch. This is how affinities worked, and why a fire mage's son would often also specialize in similar magic. Unless his soul took a step in a different direction or expression. Some mages found luck in divination; if combined with fire, this meant that fire might lend clarity. Or if applied in defense, this might give one the properties of a phoenix. Healing through setting oneself aflame didn't sound good on paper.

Lazara? Lazara was light, expressed as guidance. Divination, advice, communication; those are the best ways to apply her light, even if she could apply it elsewhere if she desired. That's a part of what her enlightenment offered to greater extent - the ability to be attuned to more elements and specialties, and gain experience quicker.

Sometimes, elements didn't matter; just expressions. Some people were skilled in conjuration, and could conjure almost any object they imagined. If they couldn't imagine it, they could produce a divination spell that could, given mana and time, form a template for them. A divination spell purely for aiding conjuration; something like that was in the realm of possibility.

Or the reverse - conjuration meant purely for aiding conjuration. She struggled to imagine how that would look. The idea of conjuring binoculars every time a mage wanted to look through walls made her snort, but then she realized that her glasses were a thing and decided to shut up.

Soul magic was higher-concept stuff, beyond even conceptual magic.

One of the key and most basic elements of the soul were its energy generators. Meridians - that provided the soul with mana - and dantians, that acted as circuits for intake and outflow of magical energy; literal gates to the outside world. Dantians could draw on extra energy from leylines and nodes, while meridians just kind of pulled it out of their ass.

She wondered about that. A casual dismissal of thermodynamics, that applied in her previous life; making energy ex nihilo. Even objects could be made out of nothing, if a soul had enough experience in creating matter.

For a moment, a dark idea crossed her mind. That every soul was, in fact, limited, but no one realized it.

Everything is made from magical energy, from mana. If that's true - if the Weave Maxim is true - then could it be that if magical energy is a string, then a soul is simply a ball of yarn? It slowly unwinds and unwinds over hundreds of years, eventually just dissipating into the rest of the tapestry?

Energy never disappears, and nothing is pulled out of nowhere. It all comes and goes to the same source, including meridians that pull magical energy out of the same source. Some kind of universal center.

And then the tapestry collapses under its collective weight, coming together into one giant ball in that universal center, before exploding again to make a new universe.

A scary thought; contraction and expansion.

Why is the Adversary weak, then? Why not carry energy from previously-invaded universes to consume the rest? Once he has everything, using that energy to destroy the rest of the energy is the most efficient approach. Like slamming everything in existence against itself until it stops, well, existing.

Rather than absorb and grow, like a snowball growing into an all-encompassing avalanche that swallows everything in existence; Adversary chooses the approach of a worker bee that moves from one flower to another. Unlike a worker bee, he makes the flowers wither instead of pollinating them.

It's not that he can't fathom weakness or efficiency, or that he hates either of these concepts.

He grows stronger, plots schemes. He's not some nebulous, slow-acting miasma on a universal scale. He is a threat that can be conceptualized by a simple human mind and takes on forms that are familiar and equally comprehensible.

More importantly, he can be stopped, fought, and beaten; and he is aware of it. He fights those who fight against him, yet when he visits a new universe, he is always weak anew? What is the purpose? It seems arbitrary.

Could the Adversary be something like a purge system? He stated destruction to be his directive, so perhaps he is simply working to slash apart the loom's strings and accelerate the process? Culling the unworthy worlds in favor of ones that offer potential? He certainly seems to delight in the idea, and he's a multiversal threat; could he have been directed and programmed to act this way, to remove potential from unworthy worlds, so the energy can be repurposed to go to more worthy universes?

Perhaps that struggle, that ability to grow, adapt, overcome, and succeed as a civilized society, or with a number of outliers that can overcome the threat as products of society - are meant to be the deterministic value for stopping him? For stopping the purge system and proving 'worthy?'

The idea of multiple Adversaries made Lazara gulp.

She shook her head, knowing she was wrong deep down. It couldn't be true for multiple reasons.

Even if Adversary took forms that can be conceptualized and came poorly armed to each engagement with a new universe, he still delighted in the destruction. Actively loved it. Everything he did was on a personal level; acting in self-satisfaction, rather than to provide for some kind of system. Furthermore, she could name a plethora of ways to better test civilizations of their worthiness than throwing a vague and powerful entity to undermine and destroy them, and eventually the rest of the universe.

Lazara sighed, banging her head against the book. How did her mind wander from how meridians worked to this?

It seemed like the Adversary was the only thing on her mind, lately.

Let's get back to it.

Souls. Nebulous, requiring anchorage to the world.

No known source for them. When a sentient being with a soul conceives offspring, their soul automatically spuds one for the new organism.

Extradimensional, not existing in three-dimensional space, but with the capacity to be anchored to three-dimensional objects, like bodies.

There was a story that the author decided to put in, about a spiritual demon plague created by a mad warlock, where small demonic entities were connected to individual instances of bacteria. One demonic soul per microscopic bacteria of relative size to a normal demonic soul with a normal demon.

Normally, a being with that spiritual weight wouldn't be capable of magic. Almost as a rule, but that warlock proved everyone wrong with his experiment.

They bred in an organism, creating another demonic soul that possessed each bacterium. The demonic bacteria eventually developed unique strands depending on environments they dwelled in; some of the most promising strands even developing never-seen-before magics - not detailed in the text for obvious reasons, being forbidden magic and all - that the warlock harvested for his own use, and even learned from. Sometimes, the bacteria formed colonies and combined their mana and magics to obtain sustenance, tearing the immune system apart with a single instance of group effort - often to form a spike or a curse to make the tissues burst - and parasitizing the cells for food.

Interesting that; environmental factors can force demons to cooperate.

In instinctive and non-sentient awareness of each other's wickedness, they generally prefer to cooperate with ones of their own kind than to die out. Or at least, that's what the strands that survived did. Others refused to cooperate and died out, or managed to cheat their way towards superior levels of power, and became stronger existences that developed something almost approaching sentience and ruled over their own little 'kingdoms' of fiendish diseases.

The warlock actually observed something not unlike a ritual happening, where a bacteria managed to open a microscopic hole to the plane of negative energy, and suckled on its power and converted itself into something almost like a lich.

Eventually, the experiment ended, when one of the bacteria 'kingdoms' under the rule of a bacterial 'demon lord' made its way to the brain and figured out a way to magically manipulate the neurons. What followed wasn't too dissimilar to demonic possession, except the bacteria were too retarded to do anything threatening or actually contact the host creature's soul. Still, the warlock thought it prudent to end the experiment right there, before they did.

Smart, if utterly, completely, absolutely, nut-shakingly insane.

She had to admit, as insane as some magic practitioners were, this was one, amazingly mad way to force results to happen.

Maybe she'd try it herself, but instead of using demons for whatever fucking reason, she'd actually do it reasonably: by augmenting some harmless viruses with a bunch of little fluffy angel spirits.

That was reasonable.

Creating a flesh-eating pathogen richly soaked with negativity and nigh-sentient malice for all mortalkind, that eventually developed diabolical forms of magic and began to transcend the meager limitations of its cellular environment... as a scientific experiment; was not reasonable.

She moved on to the next chapter of the book.

Minds were deeply tethered to the soul. A soul and mind could exist together, as a duo, with the soul acting as a 'carrier' for the mind. Alternatively, they could exist in a trinity alongside a body.

Living humans belonged to the latter case. The mind overlapped with both the body and soul at various points. With the body, in the brain. With the soul, in some undetermined core and processing module.

Research on souls was dangerous, to the point where even mad warlocks without morals were cautious about it. One wrong move and you could force a soul to self-detonate. It'd rend the very fabric of reality, space, and time in the area, creating a confusing mess, drawing the attention of Gods outright and being generally profane.

There was a certain extent to which it was allowed, and not considered forbidden. Mostly meditative techniques for forcing or encouraging meridian growth.

After a body - the brain - died, the mind essentially shut off from it, like an escape pod leaving its ship, and the soul caught it and preserved it like a worm in a jar. It also preserved the last memory of the body as a template, which could later be recreated with ectoplasm and ether, forming a ghost, wraith, spirit, or what else have you.

Sometimes, in the case of traumatic deaths, these corpora were tainted by their fear. Someone who was stabbed to death might have a scar in the spot of the blade's entry, for example.

The author recalls one specific instance of a ghost haunting that happened in his town, where a man who hanged himself because of social persecution came back as a headless ghost-monster with carapace covering his body and two-foot-long talons as sharp as razor blades and constantly lit with a ghastly, blue flame.

If that was that man's self-perception of himself, she shuddered to think what sort of abnormality something distorted like Snake-in-the-Reeds would take.

Speaking of, there is a reason why ghost hauntings and animal ghosts are so rare. Apparently, it takes literal aptitude.

After a soul departs, it is scarred by the experience of death. The capacity of creating a fleshy body, or recreating it, becomes difficult. Simply put, a soul is so horrified by the experience of death, by the feedback from the mind and the apparent idea of entropic progression, that it literally doesn't want to 'go back' anymore, so it makes any spellcasting related to crossing the 'border' difficult.

Some people believe there is also an instinctive, primal urge to not go back, installed into souls by one of the gods in the past, to prevent them from breaking the natural order.

Also, usually, after death, a grim reaper of Belamere - or some other god of death - arrives to collect the departed and take them to their afterlife.

There are exceptions. Some powerful souls can extend a middle-finger to the rules and force themselves to manifest, such as great heroes, warriors, or mages. This also applies to necromancers; their study and conceptual closeness to the energies of life and death often makes their souls more comfortable with crossing the line.

Another exception is distorted people, either with unfinished business, those with traumatic deaths, or people who want vengeance for a death they saw as unjust.

That last instance often manifests by the ghost possessing their own corpse, looting some armor and weapons from whatever graveyard they're on, and then hunting down whoever the fuck is responsible on an epic quest for blood that earns them the name of 'revenants.'

Either way, following death, the soul wanders into the Ethereal Plane and often projects an ectoplasmic shell reflecting the body for the ghost to inhabit. Any attempts to go back to the Material Plane will result in that feedback of the soul not wanting to go back desperately, and any attempts to force the passing will be ludicrously mana-expensive, and might even destroy the ectoplasmic body and force the ghost to take some time to reform.

Usually, a grim reaper will appear sooner or later to lead a soul (only if willing,) to their afterlife. Another option for returning souls back to their planes is exorcisms, or in the case of Outsiders; simply killing them. Souls default to whatever plane they're most attuned to. Mortals appear in the Ethereal Plane, but an angel or demon, if slain, will go back to their respective outer realm.

Apparently, killing a creature in their native plane - or something very similar to their native plane - is often enough to destroy their soul altogether. Just make it spiritually suicide its way into entropy from the sheer fear of death; which is the height of irony.

Which is why destroying a ghost in the Material Plane often has to be done many, many times in a row before the wraith even slows down, or you can go to the Ethereal Plane to carry out the deed in one, grizzly go. Or just exorcise the fucker into another plane altogether so he won't bother your family anymore.

It is also why the only way to permanently stop a Demon Lord from coming back is to come knocking to his castle in the Abyss and show him what you think about astrally bullying the mortal world with some stupid invasions.

Kind of nice, she thought. Maybe if I can go to the void that never existed and never will exist, I might be able to poke Adversary until he stops being so mean and rude all the time?

Closing the book on spiritual guidance, Lazara sighed.

Then, she began to study other things.

###



Savior Panel
"Some fine work, my lady. You should read the newspapers."​

It's 26th Goldleaf, 1310, in the early night, roughly 22:00.

Lazara has studied extensively on the nature of souls, death, spiritual existence, memory, spiritual memory, and minds. Her knowledge of the essentials in these topics is ample enough that she might converse with a necromancer or spiritualist and keep up with them, but definitely not overcome their own knowledge.

She has begun the study of wards and protections, especially amulets against possession and corruption. She also began to study long-distance communication systems in thaumaturgy, to make a better phone mirror, possibly incorporated into a protective amulet. As well as abjurations that can detect Adversary, his activities, and pawns. Unless Lazara intends to pull an all-nighter, she's unlikely to fully learn all of this

Your meeting with the nobles and Marshall office's representative is on the 30th of Goldleaf. Your meeting with the pope is on the 2nd or 3rd of Harvesthaul, depending on travel times.

Are there any Supplementary Actions you wish to take?
[] Write-in.
[] More of... [specific situation/character; next update will contain more related content in favor of other content. This isn't an interlude, merely less abbreviation and more detailed interactions]
[] System change... [write shorter or longer updates, change the rules, something else? Currently, aiming to write less than 4.5k words per update, but more than 3k]
[] Skip to... [if you wish to skip forward to a specific point in time, use this option. Control will return automatically if anything important happens]