Divine Apostasy Book 7 - Chapter 45

Chapter 45

Ruwen felt like someone had mashed his body and burned it. The debuffs had disappeared, replaced by a line of buffs across the top of his vision. Notifications glowed softly in the lower right portion of his vision. The chicken moved away, probably joining the other members of the Savage Seven. He couldn’t tell where the light came from, and the pumice ceiling looked less than ten feet away.

For the second time that day, Ruwen realized he had no clothes. He lifted his head enough to see a pile of ground pumice covering him like a blanket. It appeared only his head and part of his left arm remained free of it.

Blapy’s disposition aura appeared solid red. Not a speck of friendly green.

“Hey, Blapy,” Ruwen croaked, his throat resisting his voice.

“Don’t ‘hey’ me. What in the Darkness did you do?”

Ruwen’s right calf cramped, and his left arm convulsed. His vision swam for a moment and then steadied. Taking control of his body, he relaxed the calf muscle and calmed the nerves in his arm.

Blapy’s comment about Ruwen’s constructs earlier reminded him he wasn’t alone. Is everyone okay in there?

Sivart replied. Everyone survived, and the damage is being addressed.

“Are you ignoring me?” Blapy said in a dangerous voice.

Thank you for the heals, Ruwen quickly sent, before focusing on Blapy.

“No,” Ruwen said, but it came out as a hoarse whisper. He swallowed hard. His mouth dry. “I think I’m in shock. What happened?”

“What happened?” Blapy asked, exasperated. She stood and threw her arms in the air. “What happened?” She asked again, her pitch higher.

Ruwen already regretted the question and tried to piece together his scattered thoughts.

“Oh, I broke that ring.”

Blapy put her hands on her hips and glared down at Ruwen. “That ring?”

“You’re really full of questions,” Ruwen said, and again, immediately regretted it.

Blapy screamed in rage, and Ruwen winced.

Ruwen tried to minimize the damage. “I’m sorry. Honestly, what happened surprised me.”

Blapy squatted down, still glaring. “Well, imagine my surprise, then, when a Divine explosion appeared in my vaults. Do you have any idea how much energy, power, and mental focus I’m exerting to keep that detonation confined?”

Ruwen tried to swallow again. “A lot?”

Blapy slowly nodded. “A lot. Yes, let’s call it, a lot.”

“Can’t you, I don’t know, release it somewhere? Like into a star or something?”

“I wish I could, but the terms of the Pact require I store whatever the deities’ followers place in their dimensional storage. Which is the fifth biggest mistake I’ve ever made.”

“Why does everyone have so many lists?” Ruwen asked, speaking before his brain, still a little foggy, could trigger his self-preservation instinct.

Blapy leaned closer, her face now inches from Ruwen’s. “I have another list. And guess who passed that troublesome barkeeper for the number one spot?”

That must be Bliz, Ruwen thought. Blapy leaned back, and a stool appeared under her as she sat. The Savage Seven had formed a half-circle around him in the cramped area, and they all glared at him suspiciously, as if he might do something stupid. But the joke was on them because stupid was Sift’s domain.

“Sift!” Ruwen said, his scattered thoughts piecing together more of the recent past.

Ruwen tried to sit and a Vertigo debuff appeared as his world spun. Blapy placed a hand on his chest and pushed him back to the floor. Closing his eyes, he laid back, trying not to empty his stomach all over Blapy. She was already in a bad mood.

“Sift is handling things for the time being,” Blapy said. “You aren’t in any shape to help yet, anyway. Give those buffs another minute or two and you can go.”

Ruwen offered a suggestion. “How about I just shoot it back out.”

Blapy adjusted her dress with a sigh. “By the time I could react, the pressure wave had expanded to almost ten miles.” She rubbed her forehead. “Can you survive creating a portal ten miles wide?”

“No.”

“Then, for the moment, it’s stuck in my vault.”

Ruwen tried to sit up, and his vision wavered again, so he stayed on his back. “Can’t you, I don’t know, squish it back together?”

Blapy stared at him for a few seconds. “I forget how ignorant you are.”

Ruwen didn’t detect any malice in the statement. Blapy’s disposition aura had lost most of its red, strengthening his suspicion she only stated a fact.

“I know,” Ruwen agreed. “I’m trying to fix that.”

Blapy sighed again. “I know. More than most, actually.”

The last of the red disappeared as Blapy’s feelings toward him returned to neutral.

“I can’t ‘squish’ it back because I lack the power,” Blapy said.

Ruwen had just visited Blapy in the Third Secret, and it contained the Spirit from most of the Universe. “That doesn’t seem possible.”

“I should be clearer. To channel enough power to ‘squish’ that explosion, I would need to be there.”

It only took Ruwen a moment to understand. The Blapy in front of him was just a Spirit created clone of her true self, which remained trapped in the Third Secret. Pen had removed all the Spirit in the Universe and placed it in his Divine Realm. Without the Spirit to power its spread, the Darkness had died, along with Pen.

Pen and Blapy had planned for that, and she had remained in his Divine Realm, keeping it open despite Pen’s death. If she left Pen’s Divine Realm, it would close, and because Pen no longer lived, the Realm would disappear. Disappear with all the Spirit from their Universe. It would make everything they’d sacrificed to put the Spirit back, pointless. In short, Blapy couldn’t leave.

“Oh,” Ruwen said. “That’s not good. I’ll find a way to make my portal opening that big.”

“I haven’t told you the bad news yet,” Blapy said.

Ruwen rolled to his side and pushed himself up slowly. He held his head until it stopped spinning and focused on the miserable-looking Blapy.

“How can that not be the bad news?” Ruwen asked.

“Oh, child, you have so much to learn. There is always worse news.”

“What is it?”

Blapy locked gazes with Ruwen. “It’s expanding.”

Ruwen frowned. “Oh, no.”

“Now you begin to see.”

“So, you can’t squish it and I can’t release it right now, and by the time I can, it will be even bigger. Forget the Pact and just move the explosion yourself.”

“It’s never that easy. I hated most of Pen’s disciples, but he loved them. He wasn’t blind though and asked me to not let them make our sacrifice meaningless.”

“You made the Pact,” Ruwen guessed.

Blapy nodded. “They tore each other apart, scavenging the remains of Pen’s body like starving wyrms. They devoured the twelve Meridian’s that orbited his corpse as moons. I couldn’t stand it. The only way I could think of to fix it was binding enough of them into a soul contract that punished aggressors and cheaters with outright destruction by the group. The Pact’s boundaries worked and things calmed.”

Blapy’s current form was the one Ruwen associated with the Black Pyramid. Her winged human deity form she called Miranda, and he had just learned her true form when he’d met her in the Third Secret. Even though he spoke to Blapy, she was still Miranda, the Adjudicator for the Pact.

Ruwen assumed Miranda knew about Naktos and the other gods working with Lalquinrial to mine terium in the mountains around New Eiru. But knowing something and having someone say it as fact to the Adjudicator were two different things.

Ruwen chose his words carefully. “I’m sure, in the thousands of years since you created the Pact, some deities have bent the rules.”

“Certainly,” Blapy replied. “I have, on occasion, broken them myself, even though it has brought me nothing but trouble.”

Ruwen remained silent, very aware of who she meant.

Blapy continued. “The Pact is soul bound. Bending the rules or even breaking a few doesn’t cause any significant damage in the Material or even Spirit Realms. But you didn’t release Mana or Spirit, you unleashed soul energy. And manipulating that much soul power while breaking a soul pact would most certainly destroy me.”

“Wait, you called it a Divine explosion earlier, but now you’re talking about soul energy.”

Blapy’s brow furrowed.

The confused expression on Blapy’s face triggered Ruwen’s Cleverness ability, and he groaned as what felt like an icy hand squeezed his brain. Memories of his discussions with Uruziel, as they traveled in Shelly, swirled in his mind.

Uruziel had revealed that Uru no longer had the power to undo the soul prison Ascendancy had created around Ruwen’s soul. She had irreversibly harmed herself by turning Ruwen into an Axiom.

Ruwen had damaged his soul prison sometime around the time Overlord had manifested as his own entity, so Ruwen knew the prison had a vulnerability. Breaking the soul prison now, however, would reveal Ruwen’s location and attract the deities’ attention. Uruziel believed that would prove fatal unless he had already transitioned from Gem to Divine.

This topic of Divinity and souls had come up before, Ruwen realized. During that same conversation in Shelly, Uruziel had told him a secret. She’d said, “Everyone’s soul, man, woman, child, or god, is a tiny spark of the Divine. And Divinity is a gift from the Universe.”

Ruwen had thought Uruziel used those words in a poetic sense, as in everyone’s soul contained something beautiful.

But if Ruwen took Uruziel’s words literally, she had said: everyone’s soul is Divine.

Ruwen had also thought Uruziel’s description of “Divinity is a gift from the Universe” meant the Universe gave everyone their beautiful souls.

Again, if Ruwen took the words literally, she meant the Universe recognized Divinity.

Another memory surfaced, the real Uru using almost the exact same phrase as she transferred her Architect Role to Ruwen so he could rebuild her third temple. She had called the Role “a reward from the Universe for attaining Divinity.”

When Ruwen had transitioned his body from the Metal levels into Gem, everything but his bones had melted away before being rebuilt with Spirit.

That probably meant the same would happen when he transitioned from Gem to Divine, a process the Universe recognized with the Architect Role, providing the Roles of a god.

Finally, as the pain in Ruwen’s head made him gasp, two more things Uruziel told him surfaced. She had used the word “inevitable” twice.

When Ruwen had asked if he could break the soul prison himself, she’d said: “It’s inevitable.”

Then, when Ruwen had tried to find out the mechanism to damage the soul prison, she added: “I’ve already told you, what you wish for is inevitable.” And that “wish” Uruziel referenced had been the use of his soul to power the abilities of a Shadow Step Grandmaster.

All of that churned in Ruwen’s mind, a blizzard of memories that coalesced around a single fact that united them all.

Ruwen opened his eyes and met Blapy’s gaze. “Souls are a spark of the Divine, and Divinity is a gift from the Universe.”

Blapy nodded.

“Transitioning from Metal to Gem remade me into a being of Spirit.”

Blapy nodded again.

Ruwen tried to swallow, but his throat had tightened. “The transition from Gem to Divine takes that divine spark and makes it anew. It becomes your body. Deities are all soul.”

For the third time, Blapy nodded.

Ruwen sat in stunned disbelief. Uru had literally told him, and he’d been so distracted with what he wanted to hear, that he’d missed how she’d answered the question.

Ruwen shook his head, trying to refocus on the original issue. “It was an Infernal Crossing Ring, so does that mean the energy binding it together came from Lalquinrial?”

“One deity could not power such a structure. A normal Divine soul is not enough.”

“Then how is Lalquinrial doing it?”

“He offers the disadvantaged across the Universe access to their desires, but when they die, he owns their soul. He rips pieces off them to create and power things like that Crossing Ring, and you have seen the effects it has on his followers.”

“The demons? Those are people?”

“They were. He has damaged and warped them by harming their souls.”

“That is horrible.”

“Yes,” Blapy said and then sighed. “But also, powerful. That ring contained the equivalent of thousands of souls.”

“Can’t you make a distant moon somewhere part of the Black Pyramid vault and move the explosion there?”

“The Pact clearly states the vaults must remain on my planet.”

“Then move the explosion to some uninhabited place there.”

“You still don’t understand the power you unleashed. That explosion will destroy my entire planet.”

Ruwen couldn’t speak. Stunned. Finally, he forced out a question. “Destroy it?”

“Yes.”

“How much time do we have?”

“I’m not sure. I’m still trying ways to slow it.”

“If I transitioned to Divine, would it give me enough Energy to expel the explosion from my Void Band?”

Blapy shrugged. “I’m not sure, and it depends on how long that process took. The destruction of Black Pyramid will happen in years, not centuries.”

“Can we swap places?”

“Anyone can leave the Third Secret, but only an Axiom can enter.”

“Which means even if I heal my meridians and stuff, if I Smear again and switch places with you, it’s permanent.”

Blapy started to clarify and stopped, biting her lip.

“What?” Ruwen asked.

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter because some seeds take longer to sprout than others.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Now isn’t the time to complicate things with facts. For our current situation, if we swap, it’s permanent.”

Ruwen narrowed his eyes. “Is there some way you can return to the Third Secret?”

“No,” Blapy said firmly.

“Then why are you acting like it’s not permanent if I go there?”

“I am three seconds from squeezing your head from your shoulders.”

Ruwen held up his hands. “Okay, I’ll stop. Is there nothing we can do?”

“You could die. Like for good. Then I can purge your stuff with no issues.”

“Can we call that Plan B? Or maybe Z?”

“There is something else, but honestly, I would rather kill you.”

“I think I’d like to hear it and discuss all our options before you do that.”

“Fine,” Blapy said, and looked at the ceiling. A few seconds later, she met Ruwen’s gaze once more. “This cure might be worse than the disease.”

“Worse than blowing up your planet?”

“Yes.”

“That is hard to believe.”

Blapy’s shoulders slumped. “Our cure cannot be bound by the Pact. They must be intimately familiar with the soul energy in question, and powerful enough to help.”

Despair filled Ruwen as he finally, completely, understood not only what he’d done, but how complicated he’d made the solution. The person Blapy meant had just tried to maim Ruwen. An individual that welcomed destruction and didn’t care about anything but his own interests.

The only person capable of stopping the destruction of the Black Pyramid, was Lalquinrial.