“Never forget, I am always watching. When you are in your homes with your families, when you are inside your churches praying, when you scheme in the shadows against our own. One day you will receive penance, and on that day you will remember my name.”
Peacekeeper Avan: AA 17-704
Various beings, great and small, forget the importance of balance.
To some of the weaker or less developed races of the universe, they view balance as living within nature, only taking what can be given back without causing harm to the world or the people around them.. To others, it is viewed as more of a moralistic concept, doing as to others as they do to you. To most of the wider universe however, balance is merely a concept.
It takes a wide variety of faces, Karma, Fate, Currency, even Guilt.
But for Miko’nahi Virasuta, or Virasuta to her family and champions, balance was more than just a simple concept or a religion.
Balance was the only thing she was in need of.
For she was out of balance. Ever since the Asura had swept through the Forgotten holds epochs ago he had left a massive hole where there was once balance. When one could simply focus on their own territories and followers, they had to keep one of their many eyes on those around her. Many, many upstarts had begun to fill the power vacuum ever since the fall of so many of her kin, and many of these upstarts had the gall to strike out at their betters. At Her.
Dealing with the first few legions had been a chore, simply empowering a few champions and decreeing her attention and favor if they annihilated them without mercy or regret.
In her prime she was considered a Goddess of War, but over the last few epochs her territory had been encroached on so many times by those lesser of her. Even if her followers slaughtered a dozen enemies before falling, and even if she ripped apart a thousand of these upstarts with her bare hands, she knew it would only be a matter of time before they simply overran her Congregation with sheer volume.
With every weakling she killed three took their place, with every fortress or world she shattered a thousand were born. The universe may have not been finite, but its power to create certainly was.
There had been countless species born across the universe in her time alone, and many more before it, but ever since the death of the First Lord by Avan’s hands the universe had been in upheaval. The First Lord took pride in his own vainglory, and while he regularly attacked the lands of the Forgotten he rarely caused any real damage against their numbers, let alone harming the strongest of them.
How I miss the old Wars, so much magic, so much Carnage.
The new powers though, did not rest lightly. After Avan had slaughtered the First Lord he turned his eyes inward, to Purgatory’s planes.
Power abhors a vacuum however, and quickly the Forgotten had simply Forgotten why they had feared Avan. Treacherous whispers of him being severely wounded had plagued the more greedy and stupid of her kind, and did something unforgivable.
They waged War against Avan himself.
While having not fallen for what many speculated to have been a trap, either by Avan himself or someone with a grudge against the very many Forgotten in the Void's depths, her realm was still impacted by his wrath over the insult of declaring a war against him.
To this day She still Believed that the only reason she and her children survived was due to his mercy, having merely smashed through her realm to kill another within her court who had hidden inside without her knowledge. Although, the slaughtering of thousands of her strongest and a heavy injury that kept her out of commission for decades was still a small price to pay for survival.
Stupid Alkaharoth, what idiocy could convince one to wage war against an Asura in their prime?
The most insulting thing, other than Alkaharoth and his stupid squid-like face, was that upstarts had used her injury as a way to assault her domain! To walk into Her Territory and wage war against one of her own worlds?!
While the world was rather unappealing to even spread her religion into it, having previously lacked magic and being too small to consider opening portals to slowly spread the substance of Life into the world herself, the act had still insulted her for the simple fact of where it was located.
A world on the edge of her territory was still HERS.
And NO ONE touched what belonged to HER!
It took years in a mad act of rage to heal her aching wounds to the point where she was strong enough, far from her prime, to annihilate the squid race that had dared trespass into the world, but by then the damage was already done. So much of the world was covered in some kind of Poison that she was sure that whatever the bastard or the foolish inhabitants had done to the world would make it irreparable.
How Wrong She was!
What a Wonderful thing it is, to actually be surprised for once!
The poison that had spread to their world was slowly being cleared, at an astounding rate. The effect they had on it using their primitive magic and odd trinkets was beautiful. Gathering it out of the very soil and air with machines before simply tossing it out of or off of their world with small engines of fire.
The process alone is worthy enough of joining My Flock, so many worlds full of this poison that we could clear and command with it.
There were many worlds in the universe and planes covered in this poison, it wasn’t a threat to those of significant strength, but all beings are born of weakness. It was simply impossible to have children on worlds covered in it, and even those who could stand it for long periods of times had to undergo vast arrays of treatments in order to purge themselves of slow acting sicknesses or regain the capability to have children.
The amount of times she had abused an enemy's lack of foresight to send a replacement to a world when the guardian had left to be cleansed, only to lose it too quickly for them to act was almost funny, if it didn’t fill her with such disgust over their idiocy.
Over the last century or so she had observed this world, while it had been assaulted they had done well in their primitive states to fight against an enemy they simply had no chance against. Even the fact that the enemy had sent a dozen constructs to their world hadn’t mattered, each one falling to their Poisonous Weapons. She knew as well as any general how furious the original owner of said constructs must have been. The simple act of losing twelve constructs to the insects’ incompetence had been hilarious enough that she had almost considered sparing the insect who attacked the world.
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The satisfaction of watching the insect lose so many valuable weapons, at least to him, may of been amusing, however she had a reputation to save, and death to deal to those who crossed her.
His begging had been interesting though, not in the process or the concessions he had offered though, but the information of the inhabitants. Apparently the weapons hadn’t been created through magic learned during the invasion, or any outside help of a wandering immortal with a heart not deadened by age, but of their own creation. A weapon of such destruction, borne entirely of “Science”.
Many of her kin, or those of the other realms and planes, viewed technology as inferior. What might take a metal-magus decades to create it took a magician an hour. Weapons being the most obvious and personal evidence of this fact. As a Forgotten of War she was adept in nearly every weapon ever created. The only ones she hadn’t mastered were weapons either designed against her kind, or simply so beneath her that she only learned the basics before moving onto more promising tools and techniques.
However the ability to destroy a world seemingly so simply, with a few hundred to a few thousand metal rods or small boxes was appealing to her. Too many times worlds resisted, and too many times they were a force that simply had to be removed, regardless of methods. Not all worlds were worth taking, a fortress world populated by mostly drones and soulless automatons were not worth fighting for unless they had resources worthwhile to take, and if they weren’t worth taking over for resources the loss of legions or her own time was unacceptable.
These weapons seem to go through magic shields, most likely because the fool hadn’t accounted for heavy enough material capable of damaging his forces. Even if they aren’t as adept at magic there is still the chance of them dropping a mountain on your constructs and annihilating them wholesale.
The thought brought up an unpleasant memory of an underground race of hominids that had done the same thing to her own forces, and she grimaced
Thankfully my Sister never learned of that, or she’d never let me live it down.
Moving forward from the uncomfortable thought, she looked down upon the world once more.
The hybrid creations they had created, between science and magic intrigued her more than anything. Nothing they had created really compelled her to act in any real way, most of it was already being done better purely of magic. The most astounding thing was the commonality of it, almost every savage having at least access to it on a daily basis.
Mages were a notoriously greedy bunch, they never spread their secrets, even amongst their own families and organizations. Any mage you spoke to would always have one or two spells that acted the general same as another's, but with just enough of a difference in size, cast time, magic usage, element, or even arrogance in its usage that it became worth more than the magic itself. A mage who had constructed a fireball capable of melting a city wouldn’t have the same respect as another who simply reduced the usage of Mana in the spell by a small amount, even if both were worth the same in the grand scheme of things.
But these mortals? They had produced so many inventions in such a short period of time that not only did they share their magic creations, they Begged others to do better than them. Massive amounts of information of their creations, down to the very Processes used in their creation was not only unguarded, but shared freely. The only protections they had over them were their “Copyrights” which apparently made it illegal to reproduce something someone else had created without sufficient legal guarantees.
Overseeing these creatures had almost become her favorite pastime as of the last decade, if she wasn’t slaughtering someone who encroached on her territory or dealing with her increasingly annoying sister.
I need this world, if I could just pluck it out of its orbit and create a pocket domain for it to reside beside my throne I would do it in a moment, I can’t allow these creatures to fall to another.
The thought had emerged while watching the vile creation of some pathogen, a small virus that would infect magic itself. The creation of the virus wasn’t anything new, there were uncountable mages that used pathogens far more potent than it in the universe as their main drive, but the weapon itself wasn’t the reason she believed this.
It was the rapid development that did.
With barely a century’s of research they had a low grade pathogen available, something that would normally be the pride and glory of any mage or Institute dedicated around the art. More impressive was the fact they spent less than half a century in its development.
Such impressive minds for destruction, were they made for me? Is this a gift from my fallen father, something he planned as one last reward after my years of service?
The thought had merit to it, her Father had his tendencies to work through fate and miracles, and was hardly a man of warmth. Even more so proving her thoughts when she watched as their own species survived more and more hurdles in their way of prosperity. With newfound magic the act of animals mutating was not only a chance, but a guarantee. Many people tend to forget that magic is equal for all races, regardless of intelligence.
Instead of the food shortages she expected to wipe out at least half of their already crippled population, they created industries around it. Rich Mages and Knights hunting mutated beasts for sport, the meat of magically enhanced animals being sold for its nutritional value instead of hoarded by the rich, entire armies dedicated to wiping out beast swarms before they became a threat, instead of just reacting to them like many worlds tended to do with simply large walls and larger ego’s.
Her need, or greed as many would call it, for the small world grew with every passing day, every passing hour as she watched them commit every act she valued, and practically worshiped her without already doing so.
They Will Be Mine, Now I just Need A Champion.
Many didn’t realize the importance of time, taking the world in a fortnight would serve her no better than the fool that had tried it before her. She would win, they simply didn’t stand a chance against her. They wouldn’t have stopped the fool before her if she hadn’t butchered him and his ilk like cattle and sealed the gates from the other side.
No, the most important thing for integrating the world, which she wanted more than domination for once, would be acceptance. Protection, wealth, power, with all three of these gifts from her to them they would not only fall into her service, they’d worship her properly.
Churches, Knights of Protection, and a Champion to lead them all to me on a silver platter. So simple, yet so difficult with the constraints I have to put on myself for them.
This disease they created, simple to cure yet they simply lack the knowledge of how to do so. With my first Gift they will trust my Champion, with protection from an old enemy… they will join me without protest.
And with a mortal they know and trust, one they respect from an affluent background of protectors they will LOVE me.
It is simply the act of choosing the correct one.
-
That single sentence nearly damned her, as she would later find out.
Finding a well known mortal was well enough, the most powerful or intelligent in the world were practically revered as demigods, rich, affluent, powerful in more ways than one.
The issue was their character that disgusted her so.
The most intelligent man in their world, an easy choice of Champion for so many others, was a far worse man than many realized, he had a tendency towards avarice, and… urges towards the younger of his species that she couldn’t condone. Even if she purged the urges from his mind, the acts he had already committed were disgusting enough that she nearly smote him through the veil around their world.
This is why I don’t interact with many mortals, their worst offenders always make me irritable.
The most physically powerful of their world, an older woman bearing the scars of war, was almost too violent. While this would be fine as a champion in any other case, she needed a religion accepted through love, not a crusade. And with her pride and vanity the chances of her submitting to what she would probably consider a demon, or ‘Invader’ were so slim it wasn’t worth it. That and the chances of her warning others of her influence were far too great, even if a vast majority discounted her ramblings of a mind demon as her losing her mind in her old age the chances of even a few taking her seriously was too much of a threat.
Slowly, and through years of effort she was forced to throw away many options from affluent families with standing already built into their new world. Most were simply too weak minded, her aspect as dulled as it was for their magicless minds too potent and the dangers of annihilation too great, while others were simply unworthy or unsuitable as Champions in her name.
She’d gone through veterans, who were too on guard for ‘Invader’ influence to ever trust her, doctors who would immediately assume the same or see her as a new type of magic devil, or psychological illness involving their brains interacting with the magical tools they frequently use. Business men were either too driven by greed or simply unsuitable candidates. Some of the few she had found had weak minds incapable of even accepting her presence. The politicians were much the same if not far worse in many ways.
So she kept searching, until she found a man she thought may have been good enough. A “Gerard Kevin Vasily”. A soldier by any other name, fighting off beasts, criminals, and other enemies of his nation alike. The man was such a good pick she almost obliterated her throne in a fit of wrath when a cartel member had gotten him and his fellow soldiers in an ambush.
These foolish creatures won’t allow me to help them, so I will just fucking TAKE them! If they can’t even be satisfied with my love they can always LEARN IT LATER!
The rage of countless years of searching finally bearing fruit, only for it to be stolen away by low born scum almost set her off in a way that would have ruined decades of work. She had nearly summoned her aides to begin planning an assault when she realized that maybe she still had hope with the man's bloodline instead.
While he hasn’t proven himself, a soldier as a father and a healer as a mother is bound to produce at least notable offspring, yes? If I give it a few years he may grow into at least a backup option, if not my future Champion.
Maybe I am just being… sentimental? My previous choice had almost grown on me, like a character in a play you enjoy watching. Annihilating most of his world and possibly bringing harm to his children would be disrespectful to the entertainment he brought.
Yes, his son. We will wait and we will see and we will take him as our own.
Now I just have to wait, and observe the world for more Champion Candidates, hopefully another shows promise before I have to wait another century and decide to just take the world by force.
Sixteen years later, sixteen years after the death of her first Champion Select, she hadn’t found a single Champion that outweighed the cons of breaking a non-existent promise to her first Candidate, and turned her Gaze unto Markus Vasily.
He Will Do