Chapter 4: Chapter III: Preparations for a world war.

“How much time do we actually have before my summoning?” Isaac asked. He knew it was best for them to sit down and plan things out, but he couldn’t help but feel somewhat restless. The man wanted to leave the hospital room as soon as possible.

“I can keep this up for maybe another hour.” Tyrannia crushed his hopes instantly.

He sighed. “Okay, then... can you give me a rundown of my abilities?”

“The most important ones as the ones given by my sigil. Every god has one.” She explained. “Depending on whose it is, they concede unique abilities. Mine allows you access to purple magic and the ability to soulbind people to you, besides the basic stuff increased physical abilities, basic spells and the like.”

“Purple magic,” she continued. “Is one of the eight branches of the magic of the world. There is red, blue, green, yellow, white, black, purple, and brown magic; each has a unique element and different spells. Purple’s specialty is mind magic — illusions, hypnosis, brainwashing, memory alteration, that kind of stuff. One branch for every god. Purple is mine, incidentally; which means it will be rare, if not dead yet.”

“And the rest of them?”

“Red is fire and destruction, blue is water and support, green is earth and life magic, while brown’s element is rock and focuses on crowd control and structures. White and black are light and darkness, holy spells and death spells, respectively. Yellow is soul magic, mostly summoning spells and golem creation. Of course, it is far more complicated than that, but that is the basic run-down.”

Isaac nodded. He momentarily felt a little let down. Mind magic sounded like the least flashy of the bunch, and it seemed to be sorely lacking in combat capabilities, but he soon realized it wasn’t without its merits. Memory alteration seemed like an incredibly useful ability to have. And the mention of brainwashing people got his gears turning.

 Tyrannia shot down the entire concept before he could even say it aloud.

“No, we cannot brainwash people into my religion. Is a negative sum equation — we would spend more magic than we would get.”

“Aw, damn. Okay then. What about the... soulbinding?” Isaac asked, trying to recall the term.

“That is your ability as my prophet. You can bind someone’s soul to you. Humans, monsters, animals... It works with basically anything with a spirit. Once they are bound, they will not be able to disobey, lie, or betray you in any capacity. In exchange, they will receive a substantial amount of power and you are obliged to keep your part of the deal you struck with the bonded themselves. The more people you bind to you, the stronger both you and they will get. It is not perfect, however. Bindings must be fully consensual and you must give something in return. It can be something minor, or a life-lasting endeavor, but you must both agree to it.”

“Okay... I think I get it. So, if, for instance, I was to bind you, offering... I don’t know...” the man looked around the room to find a suitable example. His eyes stopped on top of a basket of fake fruit. “Apples? And you agreed. Then...”

“Then you would have to bring me apples whenever I requested them. In exchange, I would become your bounded; your servant, if you will. Anyone desperate enough to sell their soul will obviously have bigger demands, but yes, you understand the idea. Think about it as an equivalent of less magnitude to the deal we struck a few minutes ago.”

“Alright” the old man nodded after a couple of seconds had passed, but that motion was as much as he could still do with his decrepit body. He couldn’t wait to get out of there. “Anything else I should know about?”

“Two things. I have been sealed for over five thousand years; we will have to get the lay of the land as we go along,” she said dismissively. “It is not that big of an issue. Rulers and kingdoms come and go, yet this world moves slowly. I have taken enough peeks through the eras to at least understand that much. The basic rules and powers are still the same.”

“Hmm...”

He waited for a couple of seconds, but Tyrannia added nothing else. Apparently, that took care of the explanation about geopolitics as far as she was concerned. To him, that read as a simple statement — ‘you deal with that, since I can’t be bothered’ — but he had no issue with that. Isaac had spent most of his life reading and watching people, trying to understand the emotions that he could not experience, which meant he had a decent time playing intrigue.

Isaac spent a few moments in silence, seeking to analyze his only ally. Tyrannia struck him as a kind of Napoleonesque figure. Strong and brilliant, if the fact that they needed the entire world to stop her was anything to go by, but also not that much interested in stuff like diplomacy or conversation. She seemed like the type of woman to strong-arm nations into doing her bidding, more so if Isaac considered how little these kinds of things seemed to mean for her. That meant he had to move to cover for her weaknesses, and let her cover his. In this case, that meant to leave the fighting to her, and anything involved with people to him.

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“The second thing is that you will not be able to access you magic instantly. It should not take long, so just be patient. You will know when your powers come to you.”

At any rate, he needed the plan to deal with the heroes more than anything else. They had limited time before Isaac was summoned, but the old man wasn’t worried. Their first days, probably first weeks, would comprise them getting the lay of the land – enemies, allies, politics...Probably some sort of brutal training regime as well. Once they had that figured out, they could plan much better. They had time, at the very least.

For now, he was much more interested in learning about the magic. The goddess further explained what would be his possibilities. She explained sigils were small branches of magic on their own. Tyrannia’s specialized in control and leadership. Battle tactics, controlling and improving your servants, information gathering, loyalty oaths, manipulation...He would also gain access to a weakened form of his own servant’s abilities, which made this a jack-of-all-trades kind of deal. The goddess was telling him what were his options, but as Isaac had suspected, neither purple magic nor Tyrannia’s seal were fit for fighting.

Tyrannia would do much of the combat early on, then his other servants, while Isaac would be in charge of the diplomatic aspect of the group. The old man had been in prison, and had taken part in quite a few street fights in his earlier years, but he wasn’t much of a fighter; so this simple division of labor suited them both. He noticed the woman didn’t seem to care much. He kind of expected an evil goddess to be prideful, and she certainly was, but she didn’t mind being the one getting covered in mud on the front lines.

“How long do we have left?” Isaac asked once their conversation was over, glancing at the still stopped clock.

“Five minutes. Are your preparations in order?”

“More or less.”

The entire hour had gone by flying. There was a limit to how many countermeasures and ideas they could put forth. The pair didn’t know where they would end up, or what conditions they would find themselves in. They would need to do a lot of legwork before they were ready to strike.

There was one question that had popped into Isaac’s head, and he did not find an answer that was not unnerving.

“Why now, though? Why summon the heroes now?”

“Who knows? Small things have led my siblings to war before. A premonition, a dream...You would be amazed at the reasons some of our conflicts were fought. One needs but a single reason to see connections where there are none. An uptick in monsters in a region, a sudden discovery of one of my old temples, a severe famine...They are probably still seeing ghosts of that war everywhere, blaming me for them. A few of millennia is not a lot of time for us divine beings.”   

“Okay. Guess I’ll just file that under my long list of unanswered questions.”

The shadowy figure shrugged. “We will find answers, in due time.”

Isaac thought that maybe he should have felt fear or nervousness. Or perhaps some sort of remorse for the deal he had struck. But at that moment, and for the first time in many years, he felt... alive. Like he finally had a purpose. He made a vow to himself, right there and then, that he would prove to the world Isaac Refenes was worth a lot more than what was given to him in his previous life. That he was above the people who had cast him into a life of solitude. Truth be told, that was mostly what had pushed him to accept her deal. He could finally exert himself, body, and mind, to their full potential, in a world where the victors made the rules.

The excitement crept up the man’s spine.

It would be the two of them against the entire planet. Not allies, no kingdom, no followers or power... It looked like a desperate situation. But Isaac’s soul trembled with anticipation. He could have not asked for a better stage. This time, he would not end confined in a bed with no one to remember him. No. This time it would be different.

This time, he would become the most powerful man in the world, or die trying.

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