Colandria, the goddess of life, was floating cross-legged a few feet in the air, intently watching a viewing window she could create. As one of the most powerful of the 13 gods assigned to this planet, she could feel the strands of fate at work. For years now, fate had desperately been trying to save this one girl, Faylen. She wasn’t entirely sure why though. Sure, Faylen was the daughter of 2 powerful people, and it seemed as though she had quite the well of echos compared to most, but it wasn’t like more powerful children would never be born.
For years now, fate had pushed people into positions where they would be able to save her, but alas, it had never come to fruition. Tonight seemed to be no different, and the curtains were about to close on Faylens story. Colandria had watched as the man fate had pushed to save Faylen, poked and prodded around the hotel, the auction, but then left without doing anything else. She could feel fates frustration, which confused her as she didn’t think fate could feel emotions. But then her eyes exploded as she fell from the air to the ground, her body, made completely out of water, splashing all over the place. Fate broke the rules of the world. She didn’t know what to do, what to think. Her entire universe had just been turned upside down.
This world was one of many in the universe, millions even. All the worlds, galaxies, universes and Gods were all created by one ultimate God. The same God that had resigned her to her current position. She was ‘locked’ away in a dungeon of sorts. She had broken the rules set by the ultimate one, and was punished for it. She had to spend 1000 years locked away in a temple, all alone. All because she intruded into the lane of the God of death. It wasn’t her fault, she had pleaded, the God of death was being lazy. Necromancers were running rampant on the planet, armies of undead marching over the lands, souls being dragged back from the afterlife, forced to do the bidding of some master. But the ultimate God, or who she called the ultimate one, wasn’t hearing it. He had said the rules were in place for a reason, and that breaking them, no matter the reason, deserved punishment.
So, she had been locked away in this temple, no lights, no sounds, nothing. For hundreds of years all she had was her own thoughts, until one day, a noise came from outside, then a crack, and the sounds of the doors opening. She had thought it was the ultimate one, there to let her go, let her off without having to serve her full sentence. But that turned out not to be the case. Instead, a young Lucifer dragon entered her dungeon and began looking around. She didn’t know what to do, she had panicked and rambled to him about her situation, about how he could get in trouble, how she could get in trouble. He had mostly ignored her ramblings, and after his curiosity was satiated, he just left, like it was nothing. But the seal to her dungeon had been broken, and she could feel the outside world once more.
At the time, her mind had melted with thousands of thoughts passing through her at once. How did a dragon break the seal of the ultimate one? What would the ultimate one do about it? Would she get punished? Surely not, she didn’t the break the seal, but with the ultimate one you never knew. She sat still for days, waiting for him to come, to fix the seal, and potentially give her a new punishment. But the ultimate one never did. So, she started to slowly, and carefully poke and prod her senses around the world. Nothing seemed that out of the ordinary at first, until another God of the planet had sensed her prodding’s and contacted her. That was when she found out that the ultimate one hadn’t been seen or heard from in decades. Having just vanished one day. That explained why her seal hadn’t been repaired, and why she hadn’t received punishment.
Even with this knowledge though, she still dared not to leave her confines. What if the ultimate one came back one day, what if this was all a test? She was scared of what he would do if he did come back and found her to be blatantly breaking his punishment. But at the same time, with the seal broken by that Lucifer, she could once again feel the world around her. She began watching over the world and its inhabitants once more from inside her dungeon, taking a special interest in the lucifer that had broken the seal. Even if the ultimate one had disappeared, a seal made with his power shouldn’t have been able to be broken by some mortal. That Lucifer it turned out would eventually become one of the most notorious criminals the world had ever seen, until one day, he disappeared as well.
She had spent days, weeks, months, poking the world, trying to find him, but finding nothing. Then, a merchant fairy from Merellien claimed to have to killed him. She didn’t believe it, he wasn’t that strong, there was no way he could have, it was nothing but a power play. Hell, he didn’t even have a body as proof. But when Shade still didn’t come back, and she couldn’t find him, she had no other choice then to believe at the very least he was dead. Her only other option would be to contact the god of death and ask if his soul had passed into the afterlife, but after the necromancer’s ordeal, they weren’t exactly on talking terms.
That had been about a decade ago. Since then, a lot had happened. She had found out that for almost 20 years now, the gods of all the universes had been on the brink of a literal holy war. Some had come to the conclusion that the ultimate one was not coming back, and had begun to openly break his rules. Others thought that was heresy, that even if he was no longer there, his rules must still be followed. On the more micro scale, that merchant who had killed Shade, rose to King of Merellien, and now threatened the continent with war. She believed fate for the last few years had been working to stop this war. It was probably one of the reasons it had been desperately trying to save this Faylen girl, the more powerful people to fight Merellien, the better. But her Fate seemed to be sealed when the man fate sent to save her left without doing so. Tonight was almost certainly last call for Faylen, if she didn’t sell, they were going to kill her, then strip her for parts like an old carriage.
That’s when fate broke the rules of the world. The rules of the world weren’t just decorum, how gods should act, whose job it was to rule over what, or things like that. The ultimate one also created the rules of how the things in the world interacted with each other. The science, and physics of the world. Breaking those was considered an even bigger crime then what she had done with the necromancers. That is one of the reasons her mind was melting again. The other was that she had always thought the ultimate one controlled fate, or at least programmed it how to work. But if Fate broke the rules of the world, that meant not only was it going against the ultimate one, but it had its own cognitive ability to think, and potentially an ability to impact the physical world in a greater way then she already knew.
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What fate had done was change how certain people could perceive Faylens power, and Faylens specifically. Faylen had been cursed before birth with a simple echos blocking curse. These curses were quite common, and easy to break. They stopped the soul from producing echos, causing the person to seem like they didn’t have any. The stronger beings though were able to detect residual echos, or the echos that once were there. Faylens soul though never got the chance to produce any since she had not been born yet, so it seemed as though she didn’t have any at all. Not only that, but the curse had been placed directly onto her soul, making it difficult for anyone who was not a master of curse breaking to find it.
The only mortals who might be able to would be those who have dark echos flowing through them, like Lucifer dragons, or certain vampires. Those beings contained the ability to feel, and manipulate souls. The issue was, the only way a mortal could typically feel and manipulate a soul was to be in physical contact with the being whose soul you were trying to manipulate. Even a person with dark echos couldn’t sense the actual soul of a living being without being in physical contact with them. Until now that was. Fate changed the way the world worked for Faylen, allowing her souls true power to blast out, causing anyone with dark echos in the vicinity to be able to feel it. Fate though also cheated a second way. The slave collars connected the soul of the slave to the soul of the wearer. This meant when the soul started blasting its true power, even though the connected owner wasn’t a dark echos user, he would’ve been able to sense the power through his connection to her soul. Fate though stopped that, albeit in a rather lazy way, making it so whoever was connected to her via the collar could not sense her true power.
Colandria slowly picked herself off the floor, still gathering herself from fate rewriting the rules of this world’s reality on the fly, and began watching the viewing portal intently. Did fate have someone in mind, did it know something she didn’t? She watched the auction play out, waiting for Faylen to come up for sale. But when she did, silence consumed the room, nobody was going to buy her. She turned around and began to float away from the window when the Auctioneer had said ‘last chance’. It seemed fate had broken the rules for nothing, until, ‘I bid one coin!’ came blaring through the viewing window. She slowly turned back around. A drunk homeless looking human man had stood up and bid for her.
She instantly reached out her senses to see who this human was, but her eyes exploded in confusion again when she found she couldn’t. His soul seemed to be blocking her, but how? She was the goddess of life. Her domain was everything that lived. From grass, to trees, to bugs, to animals, monsters, people, and anything else you could think of. If it was alive in any form, she held domain over it. Yet she couldn’t feel this person’s soul, who he was, where he had come from. Her mind began to race again as she considered how that could be, was this person a god walking around on the planet? Did one of the 13 gods decide to blatantly ignore all the rules the ultimate one had put in place? She had already begun to believe one of the other gods was backing Merellien, but this would be a step too far. She then pondered the fact that technology, or similar ideas, from other worlds had been leaking into this one. Normuc had been coming out with inventions that had been oddly similar in function to those from other planets. Surely that had to be a Gods doing as well. Then there was the god of light, Rivas, who was openly handing out heroic blessings to knights in Alessandria like they were nothing. Was she the only one sitting around still scared of the ultimate one coming back?
She sat in front of the portal, eyes glued to it, unblinking, watching the ‘humans’ every move. But all he did after buying Faylen, was get a carriage, then fall asleep, then puke everywhere, then get kicked out of said carriage, only to sleep some more in a grassy field. Surely that wasn’t a god, right? She hadn’t seen most of the others now in hundreds of years, only hearing from a few, but surely a god hadn’t fallen that low, right? But how else could this being hide from her? She was the goddess of life, and something clearly living, was denying her access to its soul. She sat and watched the portal, hour after hour passing, but her attention not wavering for a moment. Time was nothing for a goddess like her. She had spent hundreds of years locked away with nothing but her thoughts, what was a few hours to that.
Eventually, the human woke back up, and began inspecting his purchase. He seemed to be confused by his situation, but she didn’t care about that. She once again began barraging him with pokes and prods, trying to get any scrap of information, but she could get nothing. She began to grow frustrated, wanting desperately to just leave her dungeon, teleport to this man, and demand he tell her who he was. But as it would turn out, she didn’t need to do that. For the third time, her eyes exploded in stunned confusion. The human man transformed into a lucifer dragon. Not just any lucifer dragon though, the dead one. The one who had broken the seal to her door, had become a criminal, then was apparently killed by the king of Merellien. Yet, there he was, standing in the middle of a grassy field, alive and well. Maybe not well, actually, but certainly alive at least.
Her mind once again raced with thousands of thoughts at once. How was he alive? How didn’t she know? Apparently, he could block her pokes and prods, which would explain why she couldn’t find him, but how could he do that? What had he been doing for these ten years? How many events with unknown causes or assailants had been him? Was he in on his death being faked? Was he working with Merellien? Even with what they were doing to dragons?
She reached out to feel fates thoughts and feelings. The way fate broke the rules was perfect for someone like Shade to feel the power. Did Fate know he was still alive? No, it turned out. From the ripples she could feel, Fate seemed just as shocked and confused as she was. So, he had somehow dodged the senses of a goddess and fate itself. That was rather terrifying, a mortal outplaying the gods?
But that wasn’t the biggest issue right now, if he was alive still, what did that mean for the world? Was it a good thing? No, surely it had to be a bad thing. He was the black devil, a walking calamity, a man who could have filled an ocean with all the blood he had spilled. But yet, if he wasn’t working with Merellien, and could be turned against them, that would be a massive blow to their continental takeover efforts.
She sighed, in the end, there wasn’t much she could do about it. She still wasn’t willing to leave her temple in fear of the ultimate one returning. All she could do was sit and watch as the world turned, curious of how fate would react to one of the most notorious criminals the world had ever seen being the one to actually save the person it had spent years trying to rescue. She floated back to the position she had started in, cross legged and floating in front of the viewing portal. Even if she wasn’t going to teleport to him, even if she wasn’t going to take any action herself, she wasn’t going to take her eyes off him ever again, not until she could figure out how he had evaded her for so long.
