Micheal knew what he saw was a dream. A beautiful simple dream, but still so far out of reach as to be kept to the fantasies of his unconscious mind.
He saw his sister. Tiny, brown-haired, and louder than ever. She was six in this dream, three years older than when she died at just three. She was ten years younger than him at the time, and in a way still was.
She looked at him and beamed him a smile that would warm his heart for the trial to come. Locked in reverie, he almost missed the great shadow spread across the grasslands. It was a shadow so large that it was not only seen but felt. The shadow of the old and greater Gods was as material as any dozen lesser creatures. It had weight. It brought coolness to the expansive grass plains, blocking out sunlight and warmth for a hundred span in every direction.
Micheal knew what this meant, and hardened his heart. He would not give those bastards the satisfaction of his despair ever again. He turned away from his sister’s small form. He never saw the hand of a God crush it into the ground.
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Samantha looked at Micheal, lying grisly and injured on the infirmary’s stone table, and felt a pit deep in her stomach. She worried that he would wake, of course, but knew that the stubborn little bastard would manage just fine. If the wrath of a God didn’t manage to kill him, the wrath of a petulant nineteen-year-old was bound to have no more success.
What really worried her was what Micheal would think. He hated the Gods and everything about them. He raged at every aspect of the divine to the point that he would fight the wind and the skies if he thought he could manage it. That was fine with Samantha, being lost herself, but now things had changed. Micheal had an apostle now, one that was clearly not from any of the new Gods.
A crystal of both white and black? What God of the Saxlaw gave gifts such as those? She had no clue in the end, but it didn’t really matter. Micheal hated all things divine, and now the divine clung to him like mud on a boot. What would he do about that?
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Micheal woke up in pain. That was something of an understatement, of course. Pain was a word insufficient to describe what he went through as he felt his broken rib move under his chest and poke at his internal organs. It was also insufficient to describe the feeling of his broken arm bending at unnatural angles and sending flashes of agony up and down his side.
He was also annoyed. Not furious, as he was when he’d first gotten his apostle, but annoyed. He hated the Gods. he hated them more than he hated all the forces of this bastard of a world put together, but he was a practical boy. To survive as a lost to the age of seventeen was to require at least some practicality. And luck. A lot of luck.
So while he wasn’t happy about his apostle, he saw at least some benefit in killing the Gods using the weapon of the eldest among them. It was fitting, at the very least. Another reason for his attitude was the girl sitting at the end of his stone bed in the infirmary.
Samantha was short without being tiny, and skinny while not being all bones. She had black hair and black eyes, sharing the mark of the Gods with Micheal and many of the other lost. She was also his singular friend in all the world. He would not be furious in front of her.
“So lies our mighty and implacable leader” He joked in a wheezing voice, startling Samantha. That alone was worth the pain as his rib boked into his lung. “So lies the idiot lost who decided to punch above his rank. You do know that Aryth was at least earth-ranked, don’t you?” she asked in mock annoyance. Micheal knew as well as anyone that Aryth was earth ranked. He could feel it every time his broken ribs prevented him from rising to a sitting position.
“Maybe I wanted to test out the difference in rank first-hand. Earth is only a single rank above bone. I figured I at least had a shot” he did not figure that at all. He knew to the brine and the blue that he would lose. “Sure you did. You just let that idiot wail on you to feel him out.” she teased. “And I'll bet you getting thrown down the stairs was a brilliant stalling method of your own design.”
“Truly, my genius has finally been recognized. If it weren’t for that sea cucumber of a priest I would have made my grand comeback.” He said. He feigned mock anguish as he said it, but in the end, he was just stalling. He didn’t want to have the conversation they both knew was coming. “Speaking of comebacks, I think it be a good idea to come back when the priests are ready to fix me up. I’m pretty sure I can feel my rib poking at my heart at the moment,” Micheal said as he hoped Samantha would leave him alone to think up some clever version of events that didn’t lead to him leaving the lowest hall.
“Hah!” she barked. “You really think low enough of me that you thought that would work?”
“I mean, I had hoped it would?” he said, deflating. “At least a part of me, anyhow.”
“I take it this means you know what’s coming then, Mike,” she asked. Her face fell as she did, and Micheal knew that the jig was up. He shifted uncomfortably in his bed and faced away from her. “The apostle,” he stated simply.
“Yes,” she said. “The Apostle.”
“It’s pretty cool at least,” he joked. Samantha had the courtesy to at least pretend to laugh.
“No one is going to deny that. I mean what does it mean for you, you coral-brained idiot,” she said, standing up from the bed to look down at him. She glowered at him with her abyssal black eyes, the same shade as his, and he watched her with a sorrowful ache growing in his chest. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want to see her angry.
“Well, for starters I’ll need to join the first hall. Then I’ll probably need to do my bone certification,” he said softly. “I guess I’ll also need to start actually praying, too.”
Samantha didn’t shout as he thought she would. She didn’t even keep up the glare that she had been sending him. Instead, she collapsed back onto the stone mattress, and Micheal recognized her previous expression for what it was. She was sad.
“Come on Sam, it’s not like we won’t be seeing each other anymore. There’s no way in the briny blue that I’d be spending my time with the sea cucumber bastards in the upper halls. I’d quite literally rather lose a hand,” he pleaded. Samantha didn’t move to acknowledge his words and stared blankly at the wall.
“But what about you, Micheal? You have an apostle now. What are you gonna do about that, Mr ‘the Gods suck and I don’t need their stinkin’ help anyway’. Are you just gonna take it lying down? Because that’s not the Micheal I know,” she said with a hint of anger creeping into her voice. “The Micheal I know would be doing something stupid and pointless to let everyone know how independent he is from the Gods.”
That one had stung. Micheal was sure that she was about to tell him to refuse the Apostle and go back to being the old Micheal instead. What he got instead was at least a little unexpected. “Well, what did you expect me to do? Tear out my heart just to spite the damned Gods? I may hate the bastards, but I’m not that eager to meet my ancestors.”
She arched an eyebrow at him.
“I’m not!”
She continued.
“Ok, maybe I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just off myself and leave you here alone. Someone has to make sure you don’t go around killing all the earth-rankers that look at you funny in their sleep,” he said.
Sam actually laughed at that, and some of the tension finally left the both of them as they looked at each other with relief. “So you seriously aren’t going to off yourself or something just to piss them off?” she asked quietly, deigning not to reply to his half-joke.
“Probably not, I’m afraid. You’re going to be stuck with me for at least another few years, depending on how long it takes me to draw the ire of a lesser God. or maybe a sufficiently big cat,” he said. “You seriously thought I was going to off myself?” he asked sincerely.
“Wouldn’t you? You’re always going on about how much you hate the Gods, and now you’ve got the shadow of one of them attached to you’re briny soul and you expect me not to think you’re going to react badly?” she said accusingly. Samantha always had a way of making him out to be some completely off-the-wall extremist, which, in some cases, he actually was. That didn’t make him any less annoyed at the accuracy of her statement. “Point taken. I’m sorry that you thought I would die and leave you. I won’t be going anywhere.” he promised.
For all that Micheal teased Sam, he would have rather died than leave her. She was the only friend he had, and it would take more than his anger for the Gods to change that.
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“Good,” she said. “Now start praying, It’s almost first bell, and I’m not looking to meet Nero-Un today,” she said with a finality in her tone.
Micheal looked at the clock on the wall of the infirmary and confirmed that was the case. Missing morning prayer would mean angering Nero-Un and the other Gods, something that would almost definitely earn their wrath. Micheal cursed himself for having forgotten to check the time and placed his hands in his lap and began to pray.
Technically a candle was needed for prayer to the Gods of Saxlaw, the oldest of the old Gods, but it was unlikely to garner a large punishment if you had forgotten or lost yours. The Gods were prideful and spiteful, but they were only rarely cruel. It was far more entertaining to leave the cruelty to the humans, after all. That’s not to say there aren’t hundreds of thousands of examples of the faithful being struck down by the Gods for prayer without a candle, but it wasn’t common enough to be a realistic fear..
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As Micheal frantically got in position for prayer, Samantha got up to leave him be. She had prayed earlier in the day, and was safe from the Gods’ wrath until at least eighth bell, where she would go to her room in the lower halls to pray.
Samantha was lost, just as Micheal was… used to be? That meant she would belong in the lower Hall with the rest of the orphans forsaken by the Gods. She sometimes forgot about that.
Most people thought it would be impossible to forget being one of the lost, and many of those made sure of that fact if ever they ran into one of them. Reminding the lost of their place was as common a pastime as there was in the land under the Gods. But the truth was always more complicated than that.
Samantha always forgot that she was one of the lost. But It’s hard to miss the feeling of an apostle if you’ve never had one. That’s what it was to be forsaken by the Gods. Never to have a shred of their power, to be unfavoured by the ones above all. Not even the shadows of the Gods’ power deemed the lost worthy.
It meant that not only were apostles unavailable to them forever, but prayer brought no benefits. Never would Samantha finish praying and be able to run faster, jump higher or punch harder, as other people would. She would always be just as she was.
She detested that fact. In a world ruled by the strongest arch-priest around, she would never rise to be anything more than one of the lost. At least not as she was. She had relied on Micheals's strength among the lost to keep her out of harm's way, but he would be moving to the first hall soon, and that meant she would be on her own in the lowest hall, as the only friend of the most hated leader of the lowest hall in the history of the orphanage.
She would need to get stronger very, very quickly.
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Micheal finished praying as quickly as possible. It took at least a few minutes of prayer to avoid the direct anger of the Saxlaw Gods, more if you happened to hold their direct attention, so Micheal typically prayed for exactly five minutes.
Today Micheal didn’t wish for the Gods’ deaths as he always had before. He did not imagine their death as he often did, and he especially didn’t wish their eyes upon him like he had the day before. He couldn’t bring out the hate that he normally had in such a surplus. After speaking with Sam, Micheal just felt empty. Empty and sad.
He was relieved to have sorted things out with her of course, but it only solved the most basic of their problems. Before, they had both been lost. They were the lowest of the low, but they always had each other.
Micheal always had two things in great amounts. Stubbornness and anger. Stubbornness had allowed him to beat his way to the top of the lower hall despite his generally small stature and lack of any physical gifts. It was his anger that made him hated and feared by the lost in equal measure.
He had never been the bully that the hall leaders before him had been. He didn’t make sport of beating the smaller orphans to death because it pleased him, as the hall leader that had been here when Micheal arrived had, but he never refused a challenge. He also never held back in those challenges.
It was often the case that he would leave fights for his position bloodied and bruised, covered head to toe in the blood of his challenger. He Never lost a fight within the lower hall after becoming its leader and representative, and very few dared to challenge him anymore.
That was where Samantha had come in. she was one of the lost as well, as all those that entered the lowest hall were. The differences were her gall and daring. She arrived two years ago, which was four years after Micheal had come when he was eleven and his sister was one. By that time Micheal had been the leader of the lower hall for months, but he was still challenged constantly by the older kids who thought a fifteen-year-old was unfit to be the representative of the lower house.
Micheal put those thoughts to rest in short order.
That was when Micheal first met his best friend. The only one to have ever challenged him twice.
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Chosen of the lesser God of healing, Vanriel Alpothos, entered the infirmary of the lower hall. Vanriel was the only one among the priests who cared to heal the lost. The rest of the priests in the church cared only to find disciples among the children of the upper halls, and cared for them only as far as their God required of them.
It was such that Vanriel often didn’t hear of children that needed healing until it was far too late. Twice that month he had walked into the stone infirmary of the lower hall to be met with the corpse of a child. One of them had been only three years old. It would be a memory that would haunt Vanriel for the remainder of his life.
Today there was no dead body, but instead a living one. Micheal had become a consistent visitor in Vanriel's time at the orphanage, and he was fond of the boy. He kept order among the lower halls far more than those before him had, and for that Vanriel was grateful.
“Micheal Blank, you have come to bloody my blankets once more, and I’ll bet you haven’t even brought a loaf of bread to apologize for it,” he said amiably to the boy. He called him Micheal blank because the boy had no last name, which Vanriel had simply decided was no good for a boy his age, and had to be changed. It was not an official last name, the lost didn’t get last names unless they were born with one, but it was one that Vanriel believed suited him just fine.
“Vanriel, it’s been too long. I would have broken something sooner if I’d known you were still healing things around here.” Micheal replied.
“Well I try to make it around as often as I can, but a certain someone hasn’t been causing as many injuries among the orphans as he used to.” Vanriel hinted, causing Micheal to look slightly abashed.
“I didn’t hurt them that often, Vanriel.”
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Micheal and Vanriel talked a while longer, but eventually, Vanriel had to go and quickly healed Micheals's wounds.
A cold washed through Micheals's body at each point that was healed, with his broken bones and injured organs being the coldest among them. His bones healed more readily than they once had, thanks to the influence of his apostle, which he neglected to mention to the jovial old priest. He didn’t have to heart to tell the man, lest he warn him not to injure all of the kids in the first hall, which he most certainly would be doing.
After healing his wounds, Vanriel had left, leaving a healed Micheal to go about his business. First on that list was registering himself and his apostle. It was a simple process thanks to him being an orphan since he was able to register at the orphanage's record hall, where he was finally given the official rank of bone, to which he had already unofficially belonged.
Bone was the first rank in the system that classified individual faithful. It was devised by the Lonely bishop, a world priest who had tired of fighting those beneath him. He himself was the highest rank under the Gods, with the rankings laid out below him.
Bone- the first and lowest of the rankings, earth, stone, iron, silver, platinum, gold, archpriest, and world priest.
As a bone ranked Micheal was considered to be little better than one of the lost, as it was a rank largely made up of lost and those that swore to the youngest of the lesser Gods, the weakest of all the Gods.
Next was his trip to the administration of the orphanage to reassign his hall to the first hall, which went as smoothly and quickly as his registering of his rank and apostle, since with proof of his rank he was swiftly moved out of the lower hall, and into the first.
Bidding the yound priest who had given him his room key farewell, Micheal left to gather his things from the lower hall and move them into the first hall. He walked much lighter after his healing from Vanriel, and was enjoying thinking about the faces they would make when they at the first hall, when they saw the most hated lost in the entire orphanage, arrive in his own room.
A lost gaining an apostle, or being ‘found’ as most people call it, is not altogether unheard of, or even completely rare. It had happened twice at this orphanage in the time Micheal had been there, and it only had two or three thousand kids at any one time. That meant a lost being moved to the first hall wouldn’t be completely unheard of.
The difference being that those that were found usually were the most devoted of the lost. They were the ones that begged the Gods for their apostles. Offering their possessions, souls, loved ones, and even the clothes off their backs if it meant they could wield the drippings of the Gods’ power.
The Gods, for their part, sometimes accepted these deals. Of course, they had no need for the things that were offered to them, but it wouldn’t stop them from taking them. A chance to directly interfere with the lives of those below is what every God wants. Nero-Un kept these chances slim, but one of the few known exceptions was to offer the Gods a deal.
Another was to go above the older Gods, to the elder Gods, though this was normally seen as a fruitless task. The elder Gods are as interested in the affairs of those below as humans are in the affairs of horse shit.
With the most obvious of formalities out of the way, Micheal was almost excited to move to his new room. Not excited in the way a child waits for a gift on their birthday, rather the excitement of a boy who just lit the beard of a sleeping priest on fire and is awaiting the results.
Arriving at his plain room, Micheal quickly gathered his things. It was a quick job, as even among the lower halls Micheal’s room was considered especially small. Four stone walls, a stone bed with a thin animal skin atop it, and a singular shelf for his nonexistent possessions. The only things to Micheal’s name were the clothes on his back and the shoes on his feet, as well as the blanket and animal skin on his bed.
Exiting the windowless stone room, Micheal headed up the stairs and into the first hall. It’s entrance, just like the lower hall, was in the central hall, where a wide wooden doorway opened into the long dormitory of the first hall. Instead of the depressing stone, the first hall was entirely a wooden thing, and the difference almost made Micheal weep with joy, or at least smile slightly.
He only hoped Samantha would be Ok without him. He would just need to take over the first hall as he had the lower hall, and then he could help Sam out.