Apocalypse Redux

Side Story 7: Dei Volunt

2097

Humanity had united in the wake of the System’s devastation, only for that unity to fall apart almost immediately as they reached for the stars.

There were many worlds out there, with many different people. Some worlds were shared the same way Earth was, albeit inhabited specifically by people who preferred that kind of diversity; anyone who didn’t would hardly choose to move to a world like that.

Avoiding each other on Earth was hardly easy, but it was possible. With everyone cramped into a single starting settlement … not so much.

Others, meanwhile, decided to stick to moving out as one, creating new settlements with just a single population group in them. An ethnicity, a culture, a religion … a world colonized by a single group. Assuming one was available.

Midgard was one such world. A surprisingly arid planet, lacking the large seas of Earth and many other inhabited planets, but crisscrossed with long lakes that only separated themselves from rivers by the virtue of not flowing, and its massive polar ice caps held most of the water that should otherwise have been a part of the global cycle.

Therefore, Midgard lacked the complex network of warm and cold ocean currents that shaped much of Earth’s climate, resulting in an oddly uniform distribution of climate zones, starting with sparse vegetation at the poles and thickening the closer you got to the equator, then transitioning to deserts and savannahs until one reached the equatorial rainforest.

A beautiful world, though locating the colony from orbit could be a bit tricky without scanners since it was so darn uniform.

Even the largest tree was a mere speck compared to the size of an entire planet, after all. And it was at just such a tree that the site of the main settlement. Some ancient towering giant had slowly petrified, its branches cracking off while the trunk remained, only for dirt and dust to settle on it until more trees grew on it and eventually died as well, some falling off, others, somehow, petrifying as well, a process that had repeated many thousands of times to forge a towering titan of living wood wrapping a stone heart.

For it was not skin color or national allegiance that united them, but the worship of an ancient pantheon from the far North of Earth, and having [Classes] to match.

***

His was a paradise, in many ways, yet in that, it was utterly imperfect.

Jonas sighed and hung his head. This place was so damn boring. Everything ran like clockwork, nothing went badly, and …

Bonk.

“Ow!” Jonas yelped as he jumped in shock and rubbed the back of his head, where a giant wheat grain had struck him. Prayers and festivals, glorifying Thor, the god of thunder and agriculture, and Freyr, god of fertility and the harvest, some phytokinesis gained via either one’s [Class] or Aspect, and boom: a wheat field tall enough for even a lanky teen to get lost it, each stalk towering above him,

Unfortunately, a side effect of this growth was that they were no longer entirely capable of holding onto their seeds, which made walking through here at harvest time something of a risk.

Wonderful.

Jonas rubbed his head as he turned around and returned to his home.

“Seeds are falling,” he grumbled as he passed by Svetlana, the lanky [Priestess of Thor] who was currently in the process of arranging flowers around the base of a statue.

“Oh, that’s perfect!” she replied with a level of enthusiasm he more commonly expected in response to an engagement or pregnancy announcement, not … bloody harvest.

No, seriously, he did understand that people had moved here to live their truest lives, to create a home to be what they wanted it to be.

Yet, at the same time, it was the adults who’d gotten what they wanted, as had any children who’d already been here at the time of colonization. Yet those who had been born after that point, those who’d grown up here, in this place, only knowing about what humanity was truly capable of without relying on the power of the gods, they weren’t necessarily as fond of current practices as their parents were.

Rolling his eyes, Jonas continued his march to the family home. It was a strange place, according to his parents, the size of a mansion on Earth, yet made of materials that many would look down on as being “improvised” and “primitive.”

He didn’t know how right they were on either front; to him, it was simply “home.” A home that felt largely empty, even spread out across multiple rooms as he and his siblings were, they only occupied a small part of this place, but apparently, the idea had been to keep future expansion in mind. Which was why the entire city felt like a “ghost town” at times, assuming he hadn’t been lied to when it came to what the term meant. Lots of massive buildings, barely any people.

As he walked, his eyes roamed, trying to find something interesting, a benefit to living in this place. He didn’t mind Midgard, exactly, but he wished that there were other people in a place he could visit, in a place that was less than several light years away.

However, even though he’d lived here his entire life, there were things that never failed to evoke a sense of wonder. Like his neighbor.

Sven was a Dökkalfar, or dark elf, to use the more modern version of the name. Much like the Svartalfar, the dwarves, craftsmanship ran in his blood, as well as the use of curses, baleful enchantments, as well as generally being adapted to living underground or in the dark.

However, unlike most species meant to live underground, his skin wasn’t pale, or bleached, but rather a deep, dark, black that quite literally sucked in the light, devouring it like some primordial beast, while all his hair was stark, shockingly, white, like freshly fallen snow.

Only the fact that he, like humans, had fine, almost invisible hair on their body, stopped him from simply being a human-shaped void in the world, a black scar in reality that you could not distinguish as being two or three-dimensional without walking around it and viewing it from multiple angles.

Meanwhile, Susanne, his wife, was a Liosalfar, or light elf, a positively radiant beacon of light, with pale ivory skin and blonde hair that shone like literal gold.

They made for a cute couple, though everyone was quite interested in what their eventual children would look like.

When Jonas opened the front door and walked into the living room, he found himself in an empty room … as per usual. And he couldn’t hear anyone deeper inside the building either.

Alone. As always.

Was it possible to create large-scale miracles through worship, when said worship was paired with the correct divine [Classes]?

Of course.

Yet at the same time, even if the stories had been somewhat exaggerated, there were people out there who had claimed ludicrous power without relying on anyone else for strength.

Isaac Thoma, the Sage, the man who’d beaten the Leviathan like a rented mule.

Tiarnan Mac Liam, the Fae Warrior who could bend probability and even fate itself.

The Ghost, the man who ceaselessly punished injustice, ripping apart the polite facade of society when it concealed darkness and depravity, yet stayed utterly anonymous for centuries.

All of them powerful, none of them bound to beings no one had ever seen or interacted with, indebted to the gods themselves, forever stuck worshipping distant and potentially fictitious deities that were, even in the most generous interpretations of their actions, fickle. Extraordinarily so.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Although a less generous interpretation would have called them cruel, rightfully so.

Everyone thought that the fact that there was such a thing as a divine [Class] that meant that the divinities themselves had to exist as well. The simple fact that one could gain something through worship meant that there was someone up there, even though the [Classes] and [Skills] that facilitated the process were not only well-known, but you could look them up at any time.

On the status sheet that was as innate as one’s heartbeat.

Was a smidgeon of additional power really worth all the strings it came with, then? Really, in what universe was something that restrictive in exchange for an infinitesimal boon a good deal?

It wasn’t. It really, really, wasn’t.

And yet, this entire planet had drunk the Kool-Aid.

Jonas glared at his surroundings, fists balled, about to start lashing out … but he caught himself.

Everything was enchanted, every surface covered in so many runes that it looked like it was a design decision, rather than a simple enchanting script. He’d break his hands, and his parents would likely know to boot. No, he couldn’t get into trouble … not yet, at least.

***

One month later

A festival for Freyr, a way to give thanks for the bountiful harvest, and hope that the next one would be as good.

If they didn’t do it, then what?

… would the god just take everything away in a flood or thunderstorm?

He didn’t hate the fact that they had their religion, he didn’t begrudge anyone their religion, but the fact that everyone here was stuck following it without ever having had even a ghost of a chance to make a different choice, leaving anyone who didn’t like it either isolated or ganged up on … that ground his gears.

What was that saying, “the child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth?”

Jonas could feel energy brush against his body as it sought to curtail what he was about to do, but it simply slid past him like water off a duck’s back.

[Living Loophole].

A simple [Skill] to put him squarely in the “exception” of whatever large-scale effect he was being affected by whenever possible, with the chance of it activating growing as the scope of what he was dealing with increased its area of responsibility.

Therefore, the general “no bad shit happens” [Skills] that normally kept this settlement safe were a prime example of what couldn’t keep him down.

The massive longhouse that they were currently in, which was big enough to contain something called a “cruise ship,” was doomed.

But not in a way that would bring it down in its entirety, he wasn’t a monster. He’d simply turn this entire festival into a comedy of errors, to the point where most of those present would likely have preferred the roof collapse in on them.

Or at least that was how he hoped this would go.

***

Things were going well. All things.

Mikael Virta, [High Priest of Ancient Times], had been hoping it would work out like this, of course, but seeing things come to fruition was an entirely different thing.

They’d built a titanic longhouse that managed to not only reach almost halfway up the petrified tree but also achieve this effect without any high technology or non-divine enchantments, a grand construction that would last for a thousand years.

A smaller tree sat at the far end, its topmost branches still brushing the ceiling of the grand hall, the plant gleaming as though it were Glasir, the grand tree of Asgard, that had descended from the realm of the gods, golden leaves shining, ruby-red apples forged from his own grandest workings, each imbued with the prayers and sacrifices of decades.

They may not have turned into the golden apples of immortality, but any given one had the regenerative properties of an entire shipping container of healing potions.

With every passing year, this world got closer to paradise.

He rose to his feet, sending his chair sliding backwards, the motion of his massive frame drawing eyes from all across the hall, an even more outsized meadhorn clutched in his right hand.

Said drinking vessel promptly exploded in his hand, crushed between his fingers as though caught in a vise … granted, he was that strong, but he was supposed to be in control of his strength. That hadn’t happened to him in decades.

“Whoops …” he muttered, a brief wave of magic wiping away the evidence.

Mikael cleared his throat, hoping it didn’t sound as awkward as it felt, then reached out and grabbed a nearby carafe to toast with that instead.

“For as long as we have been here, we’ve stood free and independent, and we’ve built our own garden wo- …”

The carafe handle snapped off. It had clearly not been due to his grip; it had broken at the points where it connected to the main body of the vessel, but it still looked as though it had been his fault. Not to mention that the fact that, somehow, a good ninety percent of the mead had somehow splashed across his crotch, making it appear as though he had wet himself.

Okay, deep breaths, keep your temper, you already look like enough of a fool …

Mikael took a couple of seconds, recited a brief prayer in his head, and began again.

“Once again, we’ve come here to thank the go- …”

He was cut off by a loud “creak” from the rafters. He, along with everyone else, glanced upwards, half-expecting to see the whole affair to be mere seconds from coming down on everyone’s heads, and he could see several people already throwing themselves over their children, knowing just how vulnerable they were … but nothing would up revealing itself.

“It’s fine, don’t know what that was, but it’s nothing serious.”

“Well, if the finest carpenter in our little corner of the galaxy says so, I guess we can continue,” Mikael tried, rolling his eyes.

At this point, he was fairly certain someone was screwing with them.

The horn, the carafe, the roof … once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action, and all that. It wasn’t like any of this was overly dangerous or damaging or anything else, just some childish nonsense, yet it was seriously getting on his nerves. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that a complete lack of evidence of malfeasance pointed to a high-level adult, he’d have assumed it was one of the children or teenagers, many of whom were presently sniggering.

Brats, one and all. Didn’t they know how lucky they were to have grown up here, in the embrace of the true gods?

“So, like I was saying, we are here to give thanks to the g- …”

He was cut off by another creak. Presumably, whatever that was, it was triggered by that word.

“Thank the gods for the bountiful blessings they have bestowed upon us.”

The roof creaked once more, but this time, he just talked straight past it.

“In the name of Fr- …”

CREAK.

“How about we continue this outside?” he suggested. They’d have to find whatever spell or curse was causing that at some point, but they had no time to do that now.

Several others loudly agreed so he took a single step towards the exit, only for his foot to land in the puddle of mead that had formed before him and somehow remained invisible up until that moment, then flew out from under him, pitching him face-first onto the table, which, in turn, flipped up the opposite end and upended the whole thing, sending the entirety of its contents sliding straight onto him.

Mikael exploded back onto his feet, scattering food everywhere, and marched out, not wanting to spend another moment in a clearly-cursed house and the others followed, soon enough, he was preaching from the front steps of the temple while the others listened, ignoring the occasional creak from behind him … until the whole thing suddenly caved on itself, crumpling as though a giant had stomped on its roof yet somehow without sending any dangerous debris flying. Small mercies.

***

Jonas looked it all over as the corners of his lips twitched upwards.

Jonas, who had finally found his own version of religion and joined of his own volition, began to smile.

Jonas, [Heretic of Loki], grinned.

***

And above it all, the god himself just threw his head back and laughed.

He’d never been one to be worshipped overly much; in fact, he’d had zero sites of worship in the olden days, and the times people had addressed prayers directly to him, it had been to ask him to protect their children, a minor part of who he was.

Because he did like the little tykes. Innocent, wide-eyed, and the cause of oh so much chaos, all the while convinced that they were being “good little boys and girls.” They might not be aware of it, but they were artists in their own right.

Yet just because few people wanted to direct prayers his way didn’t mean they never sent any his way, and whether they came in the form of “oh, wouldn’t that be funny,” them directly wishing ill on someone he felt deserving of negative divine attention, or outright tempting fate … if he found the likely outcome amusing, he’d meddle.

Or maybe he’d just walk the surface of the Earth for a few hours, under the guise of “Murphy Simon Law.”

That was the true advantage of his status of “neutrality.” He could not make the sweeping changes either group of aligned deities could, yet at the same time, he could act without inviting retaliation or requiring an intense ass-kissing session from whatever mortals would benefit from his deeds.

It was all far more transactory than anyone ever wanted to admit. The efforts and worship from the human worshipers left a void in the balance of the universe that could be filled by an action taken by the deity of their choice.

“You give me the chance to do something without having to think about it carefully, and I’ll try and make it so that I’m at least a little helpful in the process.”

That was basically how that worked.

Bo-o-oring.

But, however satisfying making a mess of things personally might have been, having mortals do the same without any prompting or input on his part … well, they might not be worshipping him directly or intentionally, but it was worship all the same.

His true worshippers, however … give it a few Levels, and a couple of hundred years of experience, and young Jonas there would be toppling nations for fun. No, could be. Jokes needed to be funny, and he doubted the kid would be amused by that sort of thing.

He liked people like Jonas. They were the best kinds of worshippers because they’d found their ways to him all on their own, no parental pushing or prompting needed.

Besides, unless he’d vastly misjudged the kid, Loki was about to gain his first open adherent in centuries.

***

They’d kicked him out. Of course they had.

Jonas grinned. That just meant that they wouldn’t be chasing after him to get him back the way they likely would have, had he just left.

He truly didn’t mind them having beliefs that differed from his, but the idea of being locked into not just a religion but a set of [Classes] because they wanted to be a “pure” colony, entirely back to the “old ways?”

Well, he’d happily re-introduce the darkest bits of those ye olden times.