Chapter 139: Revelations – Chapter 131: A World of Problems

GamingWolf

"How long have you been in charge of this world?" Caethya asked, taking a step closer to the nameless God. Aperio only half listened to the words, furrowing her brow as she drew more heavily on her well and let her aura spread further across the planet.

The God hesitated for a moment, eyeing Caethya before he looked back at Aperio. "I do not know exactly, but my first memories are from two or three millennia ago. My people had built a large shrine to pray for me, so I answered."

"So you came to be because your people needed a God?" her disciple asked, her eyes shifting towards Aperio. "How would that even work?"

"Perhaps the System determined this world needed a deity to supervise it, but none of the mortals living on it were suited?" Aperio guessed, tilting her head slightly as she found what she could only describe as a large rune embedded into the planet itself.

Pulling her senses away from the world and looking at it from space revealed a sight she had not expected to find. "Do you know what the runes on your world do?" she asked, the question of how the God had even come to be temporarily forgotten.

"The Sacred Symbols, you mean?" he asked, gesturing towards the floor which had — as far as Aperio could tell — a purely ornamental rune engraved in it. After the All-Mother gave him a nod, he continued. "Yes, I am aware of their presence. They guide the mana of the world so it does not hurt my people. Your own messenger told me that."

"What else did this… messenger say?" Aperio asked, squinting at the God. Something's definitely not right.

The runes she had found, coupled with the fact that the God had seemingly just appeared out of nowhere, had made Aperio suspicious already, but hearing that a messenger — something she most assuredly did not have — had talked to the God and told him something about the runes on his world, sealed the deal.

A thought brought a bit of her Void into physical reality, darkening the skies above. Aperio drew more mana from her well, letting her aura flow freely around the world she found herself on while making sure that she would not harm the mortals in the process.

"Not much," the God said, taking a step away from Aperio. He hesitated for a moment, and when he spoke again there was a slight but noticeable shake to his voice. "What are you doing?"

"I am going to find out what the runes do," the All-Mother replied as she directed her mana into the runes at every location that had no mortals present. "I do not have messengers, and neither does a world require runes to guide mana. It does that by itself."

"I did not know…"

"It's okay," Caethya said. She stepped between the God and Aperio, raising her hands slightly. "What can you tell me about this 'messenger'?"

"He is a God himself," the nameless God replied, shifting his weight from one leg to another as his eyes jumped between Caethya and Aperio. "Stronger than I am — I thought only those who serve the Creator would be stronger than me…"

"There are many who are stronger than you," Aperio said. Wisps of her mana floated around her, and the ground beneath her feet glowed in silver blue light as the only thing keeping it from breaking apart was her will. "This world seems stripped of its mana."

She spread her arms and wings, a motion that was not needed but felt right to do nonetheless. In response to her gesture, her mana rushed through the very earth of the planet, following lines she could not see, but sense — connecting all the runes into a planet-wide formation.

The anger that had been distant — absent, even — for the past while started to surface in her mind as she slowly pieced together what the fake messenger had done. Siphon, Direct, Tunnel… The runes themselves were simple, not as precise as the ones her old self or the System used; easier to read, in a way.

Their legibility did nothing to change their purpose, one that only got worse as she found a second formation at the heart of the first that spanned the world.At the heart of the second was a rune — as perfectly drawn as any other iteration she had seen of it — that almost caused her to erase the entire formation from existence right then and there. Soul…

Aperio ignored the words her disciple exchanged with the nameless God as she let more of her Void flow into the physical realm. The unnatural darkness would doubtlessly scare the mortals below, but she needed her Void to fix what she feared she would find. And to remain calm.

She wanted to blame Epemirial for what she found here. The formations and practice reminded her too much of the one she had seen the noble channel to create undead from his small army.

The All-Mother took a deep breath of the inky black that surrounded her, devoting a part of her mind to ensuring her surging mana would not injure anyone on the world.

A cloud of incorporeal black rolled from her lips as she let out the physical nothing she had taken in. The silver-blue light of her mana shone brighter and the ethereal glow beneath her skin intensified as Aperio began to dismantle the runes as carefully as she could. Having something siphon the mana and Souls of a world was not something she tolerated.

Carefully deconstructing the runes and the formation it formed was a lot harder than simply ripping it from reality, but Aperio was not sure what would happen if she simply willed the offending runes to stop existing. This way, she could keep a metaphorical eye on the mortals that called this world their home as well as their God.

How exactly the mana was directed elsewhere, Aperio did not know. She could not feel a flow that somehow went somewhere else; mana simply flowed through the formation and powered it. That did not use it up, as mana did not diminish after performing what it was ordered to do, and yet it seemed to just… disappear from the world without a trace.

Her own mana, despite being technically used in the formation, did not vanish like the ambient mana did. It stayed in her control like it always had, slowly breaking the runes and the paths that connected them by being just a little too much for them to bear.

The Souls, on the other hand, were a different matter. They did leave a trail, albeit a small one, but it was something she could track, at least. It was just that there weren't many Souls that actually left, as the faint trail she could sense likely stemmed from one that had left the world a long while ago. Does it check for something?

Aperio could not find anything obvious in the runes, most of the ones she could understand not much use in figuring out anything about Souls. Most of what they were supposed to do was warding the actual passage of Souls against tampering. More tampering, that is.

Another, somewhat more forceful, push of her mind caused the last of the connections between the runes to crumble. There was no explosion of mana across the world or even any backlash that Aperio could feel. The mana that had been flowing between the runes simply dispersed into the surroundings.

What did change, however, was the arrival of someone new. Someone stronger than the nameless God.

Aperio had not paid much attention to the conversation between the local God and her disciple, but the description the former had given for the supposed messenger had stuck in her mind.

A Human with brown hair and eyes. Fairly unassuming, if it weren't for the pair of bat-like wings that sprouted from his back. More people need wings, Aperio thought to herself as she focused on the newly arrived God.

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He paused mid-air as the All-Mother's mana flowed around him, looking around and trying to spot who was working the magic he could likely feel.

Miesto | [Messenger of the Veil] | Level: Excluded (Deity)

That's new, Aperio thought to herself as a small flex of her mental muscles teleported the newly arrived God in front of her.

"Greetings," she said, letting the darkness of her Void recede a little now that she had finished what she had wanted to do. "Why do you use my name in vain?"

She might not have been as angry as she would have been in the past, but at the moment Aperio had to exercise a lot more control than usual to avoid killing the God that had used her name to set up what Aperio could only call a Soul harvesting operation — likely one of many.

"Miesto," the nameless God mumbled. He took a step back, trying to distance himself a little more from Aperio and the now-struggling messenger.

"Is that the one?" Caethya asked as she, unlike the God of this world, moved closer to her Goddess. "The one that tricked you?"

The nameless God just gave a shallow nod in reply, seemingly unwilling to speak. Aperio did not blame him. He had just learned that he had been lied to; had been used. Not something that necessarily made one talkative. Or is he still trying to figure out which one of us told him the truth?

In the end it mattered little what the nameless God thought. Aperio had come to check on him, yes, but the main incentive had been the travel to other worlds. And the fact that it was a distraction.

"Silence does not win you any favours," Aperio said, an unneeded wave of her hand bringing Miesto closer to her. "Why did you take Souls from this world? Where did you take them?"

The God struggled against her grasp, trying to use his magic to break free. It was useless, of course. Whatever magic he tried to use simply failed to manifest in the world.

At his continued silence, Aperio pushed her senses into the [Messenger of the Veil], trying to see if there was anything amiss. Much to her surprise, she found something wrong. Very wrong.

The mana that should have been flowing out from his Soul was doing the exact opposite, seemingly at his behest. Miesto simply stared at the All-Mother as more and more mana flowed into his Soul until tiny cracks started to form on it.

His eyes widened as Aperio's hand buried itself in his chest, moving past his heart and through the threads of reality to grab hold of his Soul. Any bit of her mana that would usually flow through the hand that touched his soul was carefully set aside. Don't want this guy to be blessed.

Miesto's body fell to the ground as Aperio withdrew her hand; the slightly cracked marble that was his Soul was firmly in her grasp. Would he have really ended his existence?

"Why do you do that?!" Caethya asked in a hushed voice, grabbing hold of the arm that held the dimly glowing orb. "Why would you just rip out his Soul?!"

"He was trying to kill himself," Aperio said, tilting her head slightly as her eyes wandered to the Soul in her hand. "…Should I not have?"

It was the only thing she could think of that would stop him from destroying his own Soul — an act Aperio was certain he did not know the consequences of.

"He tried to kill himself?" Caethya asked, looking at Aperio. "How?"

"He was pulling more mana into his Soul than it could handle," she replied, gesturing towards the cracks with her free hand. "If I did not do anything, it would have broken…"

The idea of a destroyed Soul still did not sit right with her, but the idea of someone besides herself doing that was even worse. Selfish, is it not? Did she, just because she made them, have the right to not let a Soul destroy itself? Was she truly saving this one from itself? Or was she condemning it to another lifetime it did not want?

Aperio did not know if a Soul thought on its own. It certainly did not tend to remember once it wandered through the River of Souls in her Void. But then, she was still herself even after forgetting essentially everything she ever knew. And Moria does not forget.

Her disciple let go of her arm, rubbing the bridge of her nose instead. "How are we supposed to find out why he pretended to be a messenger of yours now? Or did you not want to know?"

"I already know what he did," Aperio replied, after a moment. Despite what she had done, what she had figured out, she still felt awfully calm. Holding a Soul was definitely not normal; neither was finding a planet-wide formation that siphoned mana and the occasional Soul to a place she could not reliably find.

"The runes on the planet channelled mana and even some Souls away from this world," she continued, letting go of the Soul she still held. Her fingers tingled as her mana flowed back into her hand, causing her to continuously open and close it, but her eyes were fixed on the Soul that now simply floated in the air. "I do not know where yet, but I have an idea how to change that."

"The Soul?" her disciple asked, glancing at the hovering, fist-sized marble. "Are you sure?"

"Sure? No. But it is the best lead I have to whoever is actually behind this." She gestured to the Soul that still floated in space before her. "This one was a [Messenger of the Veil]. Another organization Epemirial is involved in."

Now we just have to see if their Souls really go somewhere else, Aperio thought. Then, as she felt a tiny tendril of mana reaching out for Miesto's Soul, her eyes narrowed. Guess I will find out sooner than expected.

GamingWolf

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