Chapter 4: Chapter 4 – Possessed Of A Certain Structure

Welcome, Traveler. System Initialization Commencing.

The Theurgist’s System Welcomes You.

Current Maintainers: Archmages Ashaf, Kosem, and Yidani

Unique Identifier Registered: 36ee483b94f99ef87c536d8e4101567f

Name and Identity Registered: Sophie Nadash, Adult Female, 39 Years of Age.

Method of Travel Registered: Divine Intervention (Artemis, Olympian Pantheon)

Location of Integration: Kibosh (Dungeon Village) | Aluf (Duchy) | Shem (Kingdom)

Languages Supplanted: English, Mandarin, Spanish, Greek, Hebrew

Languages Provided: Shemmai (Modern), Shemmai (Ancient/Liturgical), Koshe, Qatn, Sylvan

BEHOLD! Your Divine Flame Enkindles!

 

“What. The fuck.”

My field of view had gone black like a canned slide transition, followed by green lettering scrolling slowly in front of my eyes. Once I’d finished reading a line, it faded, and line by line I read through the words on display.

“Seems like a clean integration, ma’am.”

“So formal, James?”

“Felt appropriate to put our best foot forward, I suppose.”

My mind idly followed their banter, and I hissed out a breath full of a thousand different emotions. “What the actual fuck?” I spun around, looking at first the woman—jotting down notes on some parchment, by the looks of it—and then at the man, and my jaw dropped.

He had one hand thrust out towards me, and there were dense circles of runes surrounding it. They rotated slowly around his wrist, three rings of them, looking like the most absolutely, amazingly magical user interface I’d ever seen. His other hand was poking and prodding at them, spinning them around and zooming in and out.

Stunned and delighted, I walked over to his desk, his hand still tracking me.

“Miss Nadash.” His voice was a mellow baritone, in that uncanny range where a voice doesn’t sound high and doesn’t sound low. Smooth, compassionate, and still professional; this was a man who spoke to people for a living. “May I be the first to welcome you to the Kingdom of Shem. My name is James Morei, and I am the Clerk Administrator for Kibosh. On behalf of Their Graces, the Duke and Duchess of Aluf, I am at your service. No doubt you have many questions.”

His pause was a clear signal that it was my turn to talk, so I stopped just gawping at him. “I’d say you have no idea, but you… probably do, don’t you?”

“Actually, Miss, you’re the first Traveler we’ve seen in Kibosh since its founding, some hundred and thirteen years ago. There have been others in the Duchy, but not ones I have been present for.”

“You’re over a hundred years old?” I took another look at him. He was remarkably well-preserved even for a man of fifty, never mind a hundred. Dark brown hair, barely any wrinkles other than a few smile lines, skin on the hands free of blotching and not drawn tight against the bones; everything about him suggested a man in his thirties.

“I was appointed Underclerk here as part of the initial expedition to investigate the Dungeon and build a base camp. I’m nearly two hundred, Miss Nadash.” He smiled at my stunned expression. “The Theurgist was displeased with the Gods for many things, but the dearth of our time in the world was writ large in his list. All are granted, in their very first Tier, an Attribute which we do not understand, even now—”

“Doctrine.” The woman’s voice cut calmly across James’s more engaged mellowness. “James is an adherent of the Church of a Thousand Faiths; what he’s saying isn’t so much wrong as gods-blinded and misunderstood. We do understand what the Longevity Attribute does, and as for why the Theurgist made it, it wasn’t to empower other people to live. He just didn’t want t’fucking die.”

There was no rancor in James’s face as he looked over at the woman, smiling fondly. “Miss Nadash, forgive me. I should not preach at you; there is far too much to discuss. Know this to be Captain Meredith Morei, and be known by her in turn.”

Gears turned briefly in my head, but between that smile and the shared last name, along with the absolute lack of any visual similarity… “Married? If marriage is a thing here.”

“I have that divine honor.”

“He puts up with me, it’s true. Nadash. Sophie?”

I responded to her measuring look with one of my own, and decided that yes, I was fine with informality. “Sophie is fine… Meredith.”

“Good. Excellent. Welcome, and suchlike.” She punctuated the words with wide slashes across a scroll, using an embossed quill that had a feather which glowed a gorgeous amber-red. “James, mind the time. Make sure she’s introduced to Kelly before Levali opens for dinner.”

“Kelly?” James raised an eyebrow at his wife, adopting a distinctly dubious face which she didn’t look up to see. I could see her smile anyway, a narrow kind of smirk, which suggested she was well aware of what he was doing. “Not to criticize or doubt you, dear.”

“Out with it, dear.”

“Kelly had the settling of Mattathias. Ellana—”

Meredith cut him off. “Ellana is eighty seven years old, James. Ask the girl how old she is.”

There was a beat of silence, and James sighed and leaned backwards in his chair. “Sophie, if you don’t mind—”

“I’m thirty nine.” He boggled at me for a bit, and her smirk got a fair bit more smug. “To be clear, I hit puberty at twelve, which was right in the expected range. Gestation of a baby takes a woman nine—” I stop, not finding the word I’m searching for. “It takes three quarters of a year. Two and a quarter seasons? We had a one-twelfth of a year measure.” I didn’t have the word anymore, and it suddenly hit me that I wasn’t speaking English anymore, I couldn’t remember what it sounded like or think in it. This was Shemmai, and it was a language I knew intimately and deeply, and I didn’t know English anymore.

“—are identical, so the good Captain is correct. It had… entirely slipped my mind, but of course if I surprised you… excuse me for a moment.” He stood, glancing at me and then at his wife. “Dearest?”

“Go,” Meredith grunted. She made two more flourished strokes with her quill and then put it away, James already out the door. “He’s going to go get Kelly. Listen, sun’s past the peak, so I’ll make this quick. Welcome to the Kingdom of Shem. We have magic and friendly people. It’s nice here. We got two refectories for a hundred seventy three people, that includes you. Refectory food comes outta taxes an’ Dungeon fees, so you eat for free; and we’re a Standard Plan village, so two-fifty houses plus houses above shops, that’s more houses than we got people. Kelly’ll help you find a place. But that ain’t what you want to know.

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“What you want to know is what the fuck that voice was when you Integrated. Yeah?”

“Huh.” I blinked a few times. “Actually, it was writing, not a voice. Theurgist’s System, Divine Flame, whatever, written down.”

“Eh, not unknown. Must come from a literate culture, not an oral tradition, make sure to tell Kelly that. So! C’mere, stand up, feet at about yer shoulders wide, hands flat on my desk, and look me in the eyes.”

I shrugged, standing—just standing, no need to be careful, goodness it was nice to have functioning joints—and walking over. She tsk’d quietly, glaring at the desk from her chair, and it sank a few inches, shifting my hands to a more natural, relaxed position.

“Breathe in,” she said once my eyes were on hers, and I breathed with her. “Hold. Breathe out. That’s your cadence. Breathe in for five heartbeats, hold for five, breathe out for five. Again.” I breathed with her again, and she nodded, not breaking eye contact. Something had grown intense in her gaze, drawing me in, and I was absolutely blushing. “Again. Now, open your mouth. Your breath in through your nose is cold; your breath out through your mouth is hot. Your breath in is coldness; your breath out is heat. Your body is an engine, one which takes in the air and transmutes it; your body is a furnace, once which imparts its heat on the air.”

My body was, in fact, a furnace. Her hands were on my hands, lightly pressing them into the desk, and her eyes were startlingly close to mine, and I was breathing just as she said.

“Just as your furnace imparts heat onto the air you transmute, so do the Gods impart grace on us as we transmute ourselves. The Theurgist stole a piece of divinity, and named it the Flame, whether Divine or Stolen; it lives inside you, a furnace which imparts its heat, its grace, upon the deeds of your hands. It lives within your mind, where your hands rest upon my desk; it lives within your mind, where my hands touch yours; it lives within your mind, where the meeting of our eyes becomes more than light, and becomes real.”

I was transfixed. Part of me, a part of me that was getting quieter by the word, was disdainful and scornful; the rest of me was throwing all skepticism to the winds and reveling in the contrast between her calluses and the otherwise-soft skin of her hands.

“It lives where the mind imparts meaning to the world, and just as you can hear my words and breathe as I bid you, you can see those words and touch the System. Breathe in. Hold. Feel the engine of change that is the body, feel the connection the body has to the mind. It is such a small step from there to touch the connection the mind has to the Flame.

“[Command]. Reach out, and touch it; and then, having changed nothing, return to me.”

The words washed me away like a flood, and I reached out and touched it.

 

You Gaze Upon Your Divine Flame!

They Shall Know You By This Name: Sophie Nadash

These Are The Years Of Your Life: 39

Your Levels of Elevation Upon The Road To Apotheosis: Worker 10 (Maxed, First Tier)

So Numbered Are The Paths You Have Walked: 1

Neither Dreams Nor Aspirations Have You Selected To Guide Your Paths

In These Skills, You Embody Excellence: Learn, Read, Study

Bestowed Upon You Are These Attributes: Hale

Discovery Begins As You Rise Upon The Paths Towards Divinity

Your Skein Of Fate Records These Deeds: World Traveler

Your Path Reaches Fulfillment; Grasp Your Future, And Rise!

 

I surfaced from the trance, gasping for air. My mouth was dry, and I was sitting in a chair in front of Captain Meredith’s desk; seconds had passed, maybe a minute, but I was pretty sure that the residual heat in my face meant it wasn’t any longer than that.

“Wow. That was… something, alright.”

“Wouldn’t know.” Meredith huffs out a breath, running a finger across her forehead. “Now. Got an important question for you. Ya need to answer it immediately, no thinking, no hesitating, or this is gonna take a while longer. Understand?”

“Sure?” My mind spun a little, trying to think of all the possible questions she could ask. Most of them, naturally, were embarrassing. “Go for it.”

“What color is my hair?”

“Blackish purple.” My response came immediately, as bidden, and I shook my head a few times afterwards. There was a feeling, a reaching out with my mind to touch something, like I was a bridge between that feeling of touching the System and my vision. As soon as I noticed it, it broke, and I suddenly couldn’t remember what color her hair was; I only knew what I’d called it. “Wow, that’s trippy as shit.”

“Seeing. Or Observe, or Inspection, whatever you wind up fucking getting. Your first Skill unlock in your new home. Alright! We’re done here, go on, out the door, down the corridor, turn left at the end, head for the sunlight.” She stared at me for a beat, hand reaching for a quill, as I blinked in stupefaction. “Well?”

“I still have—”

“—a lotta fucking questions, I’m sure, but that’s for Kelly and my husband. You touched the System on purpose there; you can do it again, you’re set.” She glared at me, but I had the impression she wanted me to push, so I stayed put. “Fine. Fine! One question. One.”

Words caught in my throat. The first thing I was going to ask could absolutely wait, I knew it could wait. If I had only one question, and I didn’t have enough context to know what a good question was… “What’s the one piece of advice I need most, that I’m least likely to get from anyone else?”

Her eyes gleamed. “Whatever you’re gonna do, don’t take a combat Class. Out of shape, a flincher, missing the disposition, got no training; walk that road, and I’ll be filling out forms about how ya died before next season’s out.”

I grimaced at that, laughter threatening to bubble out of me. “I hear you loud and clear, Captain. Thank you for your time.”

She grunted, attention returning to the scroll she’d pushed aside for my hands, and I made my way out her office’s door.

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