Chapter 196: Omen – Chapter 182: Universal Constant

Aperio stretched her arms over her head and let her wings extend to their full length as she and Caethya appeared in the courtyard of Mister Penbrooks’ House of Healing. While she did not think she was entirely done dealing with the mess the [Ancestral Guard] had produced, she did not want to do any unnecessary meddling. Only if Moria asks for my help. For now, her task was finding Earth, something she had no real idea how to accomplish.

"I really don't know what to think about Ferio," Caethya said as she ducked under one of Aperio's wings. "It almost feels like she wants you to become who you were again."

The All-Mother lowered her arms again and folded her wings behind her back. She brushed a hand over her stomach, smoothing out a few wrinkles in her dress only she could perceive as she contemplated her love's words.

"She wants me to view mortals as… things, maybe?" Aperio guessed, offering a small shrug. "It certainly seems like that is how she perceives most of them. Little figures that wander the world to entertain her and the other divines."

It might not be quite correct, but that was the only explanation she could think of for why her daughter considered the potential war between the Beastkin tribes to be a fun mortal quarrel and not the potentially devastating loss of life it actually was. It made no sense to Aperio to view another living being in that way, but the knowledge she had gained about her past self was more than enough to know that she had not always been so… open minded on the matter.

"In any case," Caethya said as she looked up at Aperio, "she needs to figure out how to accept that you are now a different person, and will likely never be the one she remembers again."

"I think she knows that already. She simply has not accepted it yet." The All-Mother let out a small sigh as she started to walk towards the door that led inside the House of Healing. "I am not sure what I can even do to change that view."

"Probably nothing," Caethya replied, falling into step next to Aperio. "But I still find it a little unsettling. It also makes me ask myself if I will come to view mortals like that if I live long enough."

Aperio furrowed her brows at her love's words. She placed her hand onto the door as soon as they reached it, holding it shut with her weight. "Ferio does not know how it is to live as a mortal. Just like me, before all of… this." She lowered her head slightly. "I fear that her view on the world will not change unless she is forced to see it in a different light; something I will not do."

"And nobody would ever expect that," Caethya said. "Probably. Nobody that knows even a little bit about you at least."

"I hope so," Aperio replied and took her hand off of the door, opening it in the process as her magic held on to it. "Now to figure out where Earth is." Still don't know how to go about that… Maybe ask Diskrye?

The deity in charge of space should know where Adam's home world was and, more importantly, how she could get there. It was, after all, in charge of making worlds. If it forgot where it put them, everyone would suddenly have a lot more problems.

A thought was all she needed to let her aura unfold itself high above Verenier in search of Diskrye. Finding the space-borne deity was easier than Aperio had anticipated as it only took a moment before she could feel space bending itself around her presence in the nothing. Just like the first time she had met Diskrye, it danced around her, seemingly quite happy that she paid it a visit. Even if it's only a bit of my attention.

Down on Venerier, Aperio was walking through the hallways in the House of Healing, trying not to wander into too many mortals while still taking as direct a path to Adam's room as possible. Caethya only offered a small giggle after she had asked why the route was so peculiar and Aperio had told her the reason. The Demigoddess seemingly found it quite funny that Aperio wanted to avoid the mortals and their stammering.

"I simply do not wish them to worship me," she said. "And apparently my mere presence moves them to do just that."

Caethya looked Aperio up and down before she smiled and let out another slight giggle. "Well, you are divine."

Aperio narrowed her eyes slightly as she ducked through yet another doorway that was too low for her. "I do believe that kind of divine is not something many people see in me, or even consider." Most just see the title and that's it.

Diskrye, high above Verenier, seemed quite happy to bask in the attention it was receiving from Aperio. It made no attempt to communicate, only speaking once the All-Mother had spoken first by reaching out as carefully as she could. Aperio had doubted that her telepathy would hurt or injure Diskrye, but it still paid to be careful. Killing the deity in charge of space was not something Aperio wanted to do. The fact that I have to even consider the possibility…

One of these days, she would find a way to strengthen the people she had to deal with on a regular basis enough that she could not kill them on accident. That she had to be careful around her love all the time was already enough. A little too much force could break Caethya and a fit of anger could level any city she was in. Probably even the continent. What happened after the ritual that returned her power was proof of that, but at least she could control her own strength better now, despite the fact that she was somehow still growing stronger.

That was something she never quite understood. She had made everything, and her will would become reality if she wished it to be, and yet she could still feel herself unconsciously amassing more strength, not just in the body she inhabited but the magic she used as well. It was almost as though she was weaving herself into the fabric of reality itself, something that was quite nonsensical and contradictory as she was also quite explicitly doing the opposite by deliberately confining herself to the body she had crafted to be her own. A body she was not willing to give up.

"Do you have any idea on how to find Earth?" Caethya asked as the two of them arrived in front of Adam's door. "I doubt your aura reaches that far while you are in a physical form."

"I have no intention of finding out how far my reach truly is," Aperio replied as she asked Diskrye the exact same question her love had asked her. "I am currently speaking to Diskrye to see if it knows where I have to look. It made most worlds, so it should know."

"Hopefully," her love said. "Despite the scary prospect of leaving my home world, I find myself eerily excited to see what a world without Gods and magic actually looks like." Caethya directed her eyes at the ceiling. "Imagine what they came up with to solve the problems that we solve with a literal wave of our hand." She looked back at Aperio, a wide smile on her face and a sparkle in her eyes that the All-Mother had not seen before but wanted to stay there no matter the cost. "Maybe they have even figured out things we have never considered, or gone to places we had never dreamed of going to."

"Like space?"

"Yes!" Caethya exclaimed, bouncing slightly on her feet. "I have been there thanks to you, and Vigil had his temple on the moon, but everyone else here on Verenier has not even considered the possibility of living up there. Even when it was still around, most mortals — myself included — did not really believe that Vigil had built something on one of the moons."

"Perhaps they found a way to leave their world," Aperio replied with a smile of her own. "I am more worried about what will happen when I, the source of mana, come in contact with a manaless world. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen."

Aperio knocked on the door, the door moving a little more than she had thought it would. Perhaps I should go back to simply kicking in doors… As weird as it was to think about, kicking in those dungeon doors as she muddled around during her first days back on Venerier had been quite satisfying. But those doors also did not belong to anyone. If she could, Aperio wanted to prevent undue property damage; she had no money to pay for it, after all.

"And yet you want to go," Caethya said. "To me that means you either have a plan on how to deal with whatever happens, or you have already accepted that your presence will bring change to Earth."

"A little of column A and a little of column B," the All-Mother replied, opening the door as Adam invited them in. A bundle of images and what Aperio could only describe as feelings from Diskrye caused her to pause for a moment before she continued to speak. "It is only a matter of time until the System goes there, so why not observe it while it does… whatever it does."

The space-borne deity had shown her how it had made Earth, and how it had placed the universe it inhabited in its own little realm, just like everything else it had made. Like her old self had taught it.

"I see," Caethya said and stepped past her love, into the room. She paused once inside and looked at Aperio for a moment before she shook her head. "As stupid as it sounds, I am a little worried about you going there. I know that a lack of mana doesn't do anything to you, but I still feel a bit uneasy about the whole thing."

"I'm more worried about my home," Adam mumbled as he looked first at Caethya and then Aperio. "Your girlfriend defies all logic and excels at breaking stuff."

"It is not my fault everything is so fragile," Aperio said as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She spread her wings as much as she could in the room and stood back up to her full height. "Earth will probably be worse than Verenier in that regard. Humans without magic sound like something that might break simply from my aura alone."

It was a good thing that excluding mortals from her sphere of influence was something that barely required a thought at this point. She had yet to figure out if it worked on the scale of a world that had little to no mana on its own, but the thought brought with it a rare glint of optimism within her.

"I mean," Adam began, letting out a sigh of what the All-Mother gathered was relief and rubbing the back of his neck, "when I first came here and I saw you, I thought you had come to reap my Soul or something. Felt like it, too." He cleared his throat. "I couldn't move and could barely breathe. Like my entire being was trapped in a vice or something.

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"In any case," he continued, reaching behind him, "I had something made to help you remain a little more hidden on Earth."

"A hat?" Aperio asked, the item Adam had picked up already perfectly visible to her. "A weird looking hat," she added as the shape of it was brought out for her eyes to see.

"A beanie," Adam corrected. "To hide your ears. Remember, no Elves on Earth. Well, no real Elves, at least."

"You have fake Elves?" Caethya asked as she took the 'beanies' Adam offered. She handed one to Aperio and turned the other in her hand. "You are also lucky neither of us is very traditional. Even implying to one of the older Elves that they should hide their ears can get you into a lot of trouble."

"Ah, well… I didn't know?"

"It is fine," Aperio replied, putting on the hat and making sure it covered the tips of her ears. She tilted her head as she let the fabric move her ears, causing them to be pressed against her skull. "Feels weird."

Perhaps the weird feeling came not only from the odd head-wear Adam had given them but also the fact that a part of her mind was occupied with sifting through the space beyond physical reality in which Diskrye built worlds and universes before bringing them forth to their place in Aperio's creation.

The sheer number of these realms was not something Aperio had expected, but it did help explain just why she was as strong as she was. Every single one of the realms her mind brushed past was surrounded by a comforting nothing she knew was part of her. A part that separated all the worlds that existed into their own little universes. Feels almost like the System. Is that the Veil, then? Am I the Veil, or is it a part of the System? But, the System is me...

If it had been possible for Aperio to get a headache, she would have gotten one at this moment. Luckily, her body was not able to give her one.

"Besides being taller than any person I know and still looking like you can and will break me, it works."

The sound of Adam's voice pulled her thoughts away from the absurdity of her own creation and back to Verenier and the task at hand.

"I mean, she could break you," Caethya said, mimicking Aperio and putting on the hat. "But so could I. Neither of us will, though."

The All-Mother wiggled her ears slightly, a touch of her magic necessary for the fabric not to rip. "I do not like this covering," she declared and pulled it off of her head. "Perhaps I could pass as one of your fake Elves?"

Adam gave Aperio a long look, the All-Mother tilting her head ever-so-slightly. "Well?" she asked. "Do I need to hide my wings for you to be able to judge that?"

"If you can, that would be good, yes."

With a sigh, Aperio hid her wings, the stabbing pain beneath her shoulder blades a lot less sharp than she remembered from her first experience of hiding her wings in the Void. Still, the lack of her feathered limbs made her feel incomplete and a little… exposed.

"I won't go as far as to cover my back," Aperio said, glaring a little at Adam. "And I will not hide my wings if we are alone."

The human let out a slow, shaky breath. "That's fine. I just ask that you don't kill everyone that will comment on your looks. Some people have… views on the ways others dress and your attire definitely does not fit their view."

"And I do not care what they think," Aperio replied, narrowing her eyes slightly as she pushed her perception past more worlds shrouded in the nothing of herself. "I wear what I want to wear. If I did not wish to maximise my chances at remaining hidden, I would not even hide my wings."

If she was completely honest with herself, Aperio did not want to hide her ears no matter what. The mere idea caused a bit of rage to bubble up inside her as she could not help but think back to her time as a slave.

"Funnily enough," Adam began, "if you keep the armour you have now, most people would probably think you are cosplaying." He cleared his throat. "It's people dressing up as characters from their favourite book or… play. Those have Elves."

"If it works," the All-Mother replied with a shrug, her wings coming back into being behind her and mirroring the motion of her shoulders. "I do not care what they call it, but I would rather not hide who I am." Well, what I want to be.

That her true form was an amorphous cloud of nothing was not something anyone needed to know. In all honesty, Aperio would have liked to forget that little fact herself if she were able to, but it wasn't an option. At least I can have a body… Seeing how many worlds existed that were all dependent on the System, and therefore herself, helped explain why the body she had made for herself had to grow ever stronger. If she truly wished to have all of herself in one place, she had a lot of work left to do.

"It's good enough," Adam replied with a small shake of his head. "Now the only problem left is the language. Neither of you speak any of the ones spoken on Earth. At least I assume so."

"We do not," Aperio replied, as she devoted a bit more of her attention to figuring out the [Translation] skill. Her strategy of letting her subconscious do that task for her had seemingly not worked, as she was still no closer to understanding anything aside from Ancient Common and a very outdated version of Dryadalis, the old language of the Elves. "I also somehow doubt your people speak Common."

"Some probably speak a language with that name, but it's not the one you find here. At least I doubt it."

Caethya offered a small shrug. "Aperio has to find Earth first anyway, so we have a bit of time. If we have a few days, I am sure I can learn the basics without the help of a skill and I am certain our lovely little creator over there could master it. You would just have to teach us."

"I would have to figure out how to turn off my [Translation] skill at will," Adam said. "‘Cause at the moment, I am speaking English, not Common. You just hear what you understand."

"Oh, that's easy," Caethya said and walked over to Adam. She sat herself down next to him on the bed and opened a part of her [Status] view, one displaying a list of skills far longer than Aperio had anticipated. "You just tap on one and tell it to turn off. If you are good enough, you can just will it to turn off, but I don't think you are that comfortable with the System itself yet."

Aperio smiled slightly as Adam and her love began to point at things and call their names in their respective languages. A thought caused the throne from her temple to appear in the corner of Adam's room. It barely fit, but Aperio wished to sit on a chair that did not crush her wings while she figured out where Earth was, how the [Translation] skill worked, and did her best to pay attention to Caethya's attempt to learn this English that Adam spoke.

Despite all the uncertainty in her life, Aperio found herself oddly happy. The prospect of going to a different world to just look was… relaxing. Almost like a little vacation.

GamingWolf

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