Lilith held Mai close, waiting patiently for their guests to arrive. It was something of a big day, as Jerry was going to officially transfer a plane to Kali, as well as hold a gathering to meet with all the people they had confirmed as being touched by the eldritch.
“Mama, what are we doing again?” Aria asked apprehensively.
“We have some guests coming over.” Eve said gently. “And you and Mai have a secret power in you that your Ma can’t figure out, so we have the experts here to take a look at it.”
“We’re not in danger, right?”
“Of course not.” Eve replied. “You’ve had this ever since Errus was born; it’s totally safe.”
“What kind of power?” Mai asked.
“We’re not sure, that’s why we’re having the expert check it out, but it’s from the same place some of my powers come from.” Lilith explained. “You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, of course, but we think it would be good to know what it does.”
“I think so too.” Mai said. “I’m really curious, when are they getting here?”
“They should be here any second now.” Lilith said.
And, only a minute or so later, a rather large group of people appeared in the room in front of them. “Everyone, thanks for coming.” Jerry, a tall blond vampire, said, stepping out of the group of people and turning to face them. “I understand this is short notice, but I felt that it was important that you all got to know each other, as I think you’ll end up working together fairly often in the future. So, for the sake of those of you who haven’t met, let’s make introductions! Kali, would you like to go first?”
“Sure.” Kali said, stepping away from Lilith’s side. “Hi everyone, most of you know me, but for those of you that don’t, I’m Kali Clements, the Administrator of these planes! As you might be able to see, I’m a succubus, and the distant aunt of Maven. I grew up in Amy’s planes and worked as a Sub-Administrator there before becoming a full Administrator. I’m happily married to Lilith, and if any of you ever need any advice or anything, feel free to give me a call, I’m always up to chat! Uh…I guess we should do the rest of us now. Lilith?”
“Hey, like Kali, most of you know me already, but my name’s Lilith. I am, unfortunately, the one the Elder Gods chose to make their ‘piece’, and I’m…something of an eldritch being myself now. It’s a little complicated, but Eve here is also me, and there are two others you won’t be seeing much; Mae is working as a biological supercomputer in my body, and Nuwa is the dungeon we’re in now. We’ve all got different personalities but share memories and senses, so talking to one of us is as good as talking to any of the rest of us.”
“Let me make one thing clear,” Eve said, “I am not a child. I use this form to make my enemies underestimate me. I work as Queen of Monsters here on these planes, so don’t think you can get away with treating me like a kid; I’m just as capable as Lilith. The two kids that look like Lilith are our kids, Mai and Aria, and they’re here mostly to let Jerry take a look at them; we’re not letting them do any serious work until they’re older, much as they might want to.”
“Hi!” Mai said cheerfully. “I’m Mai!”
“A-and I’m Aria.” Aria said, hiding behind Eve as best she could. “N-nice to meet you.”
“Guess that just leaves me.” Judy said. “I’m Judy Clements, Lilith’s aunt and Kali’s apprentice. I work as head of intelligence for the planes here, keeping everyone in the know about goings-on. I’m not a Higher Being or anything, but I’ll do my best to help where I can.”
“We should probably fix that.” Jerry mused. “I’ll transfer the Worship for it to you later, Kali, as well as some for your kids. I think that everyone who’s been touched by this should at least be a Higher Being.”
“Jerry, I –”
“Kali, just let it happen.” Amy said, smiling slightly. “He’s not going to budge, trust me.”
“Fine.” Kali groaned.
“I suppose, speaking of me, while I think I’ve met all of you at least once, but just as a refresher, I’m Jerry, a vampire as well as one of the top Administrators and the lead scientist in our faction.” Jerry said. “I don’t seem to have any eldritch abilities given to me specifically, but I’ll be doing my best to help everyone make sense of everything. If anyone notices anything strange, please let me know at the first opportunity and I’ll come look into it. Connie?”
Connie, a tall human woman with short brown hair gave a nod. “Like Jerry, I think I’ve met all of you at least once, but I’m Connie Yggdrios, a human, Jerry’s Goddess of Commerce, and wife of these three. I’m not totally sure why I’ve been given eldritch stuff, but I’ll do my best.”
After a moment, a kitsune with orange hair and fur spoke up. “Um, I’m Lia Yggdrios, a kitsune.” She said. “I’m not…used to all this stuff but, apparently, I have some kind of special power? I don’t totally get what’s happening but I’m not against helping out, I think.”
A shorter vampire woman with blonde hair spoke next. “I’m Amelia.” She said flatly. “And let me make one thing clear: I have no intention of being friends with any of you. I’m here because I’m forced to be here, and I think there are much better uses of my time.”
“Don’t be like that, Amelia.” The last of their group, a tall, voluptuous, human woman said gently. “This is something that is bigger than us. We’ve been more than fairly compensated, and we’re going to be actively helping secure our future.”
She looked up at the assembled people. “I’m Rose Yggdrios, a…dryad, I suppose? The ‘Personification of the World Tree’, to be precise. I’m more than happy to get along with all of you, and to talk at any time. The three of us here,” she motioned at herself, Lia, and Amelia, “are new to the whole ‘Higher Being’ thing, so please forgive us for our inexperience.”
“And, Amelia, I feel it pertinent to remind you that over half of the people in this room could permanently kill you.” Jerry said. “You are not the strongest person in the room, and the only way for you to break into their level is to work hard here and learn what you can from them.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Amelia snorted derisively. “I find that a little hard to believe.” She said. “I did all this system innovation or whatever, I can tell you’re just trying to scare me.”
“H-he’s right, Amelia.” Connie said shyly. “I don’t think you quite understand the kind of thing you’re dealing with here; you’ve been a big fish in a small pond.”
“I beat you, though.” Amelia argued. “You can’t exactly call that a ‘small pond’ if you ask me.”
“Lilith, Eve, would you please put a little humility in her?” Jerry asked. “Kill her if you have to, she’s got a bit of an overinflated ego and needs to realize that she isn’t the top dog, even if she’s not restricted.”
Lilith let go of Mai, and Amelia immediately began to cast some sort of spell, but Lilith was faster and teleported next to Amelia. Admittedly, Lilith could feel that Amelia had a lot of Mana, more than Lilith, but that was before taking any of the Parallels into account. So, Lilith began to squash Amelia’s spell with her Mana, pouring more and more into it as Amelia tried to escalate.
While she was distracted, Mae analyzed Amelia, figured out how much health Amelia could take, then poured one point of their extra Mana and Stamina into Judge, Jury, Executioner, one of their Higher Being abilities, before pouring most of the rest into a second use of the ability. The ability allowed them to force a target to obey a command or take a large penalty, in this case “immediately die or take the penalty”, with the penalty being losing as much HP, Mana, and Stamina each as the total amount of HP, Mana, and Stamina Lilith put into the ability.
By pouring one point into it, it activated Righteous Indignation, an ability that doubled Lilith’s stats against those who had committed a major crime or directly disobeyed Lilith within the past year, allowing the rest of the Mana and Stamina for the “real” hit to be more effective. And, finally, she chose to make the penalty nonlethal, leaving Amelia at one HP, no Mana, and no Stamina instead of killing her outright. Due to Amelia’s innate resistance as a Higher Being with Worship, Lilith was only able to convert about half of what she put in to an actual effect, but that was plenty.
Amelia’s eyes widened as Lilith worked, and she tried to marshal some Worship to counter the ability, but Lilith squashed it with some of her own, forcing her to take the hit. The moment it connected, Amelia crumpled like a marionette that had had its strings cut, wheezing as she fell to the floor.
Lilith healed her using Kindness’s Kiss, one of her Virtue abilities, then teleported back to the place she had been before. “I could have made that lethal.” Lilith said. “Remember, this is the kind of war we’re going to end up fighting; there is no such thing as overpreparation.”
“Then how are we supposed to do anything?!” Lia blurted out. “I couldn’t even make sense of what you did!”
“With time and practice.” Jerry said calmly. “Though, I must say that that caught even me a little off-guard; it was far more efficient a use of Worship than I had thought you were capable of.”
Lilith frowned. “I didn’t use Worship, though? Just Mana and Stamina?”
Jerry’s eyes widened. “You translated it to Worship, though.” He breathed. “Just like Blood Money…fascinating. How?”
“The ability just lets me do it.” Lilith replied. “Ask Kali, she’s the one that gave it to me.”
“I didn’t put that in there.” Kali said. “It must have been a tweak from the Elder Gods or just her subconscious doing it and putting it in the ability description.”
“I suppose we can chalk it up to her eldritch nature putting her more in touch with the base mechanics of universe than we had thought.” Jerry said. “Lia, not everyone you fight is going to have something like that; Lilith is an exception. Still, as you get used to your status as a Higher Being, you’ll learn to use Worship more efficiently and practically, which will let you break into these sorts of fights.
“That’s why this work is so vitally important; if the Higher Beings of a plane are not able to fend off invading Higher Beings, then those invaders are free to trample over the mortals, who don’t have any way of fighting back. And from then, it’s only a matter of time before invading mortals occupy the plane. But…we’ve gotten off track, sorry. Amy, if you would introduce your group?”
Amy, a green slime woman, gave a nod. “I’m Amy, slime girl and head Administrator of our faction. Like Jerry, I don’t have any eldritch stuff on me, but I’m doing my best to help make sense of things and prepare us for the inevitable war. If you need something from me, give me a call, but only if it needs to be me exactly; Jerry is better at this stuff than I am, and I’m busy so I won’t be able to get to you for a bit unless it’s really important. After all this is over, though, do feel free to hit me up whenever, I’m happy to help or chat or whatever. You four, go ahead.”
“Right.” A blonde human woman said. “I’m Fortune, mother of Tess and Goddess of Fortune on Amy’s planes. I’m not much of a fighter, but Tess tends to pick up the slack for me.”
Another blonde woman gave a nod. “And I’m Tess Los, Fortune’s Appointed as well as the wife of these two.” She said, motioning at the other two people in Amy’s group. “Nice to meet you.”
A black-haired succubus that looked remarkably similar to Kali stepped forward. “I’m Maven Los, Appointed of Dungeons and Kali’s distant niece.”
“Are you our cousin, then?” Mai asked excitedly.
Maven nodded. “Of course. So, if you ever need something, don’t be afraid to ask us!”
The last member of their group, a redheaded human, gave a smile. “And that just leaves me. I’m Ellie Los, wife to these two beauties and Appointed of Life and Death. Pleasure meeting you all.”
“And that’s everyone we know of for now that’s been touched by the eldritch.” Jerry said. “The other Administrators in our faction are looking, but we haven’t found any others yet. Give it a few months, though, I’m sure there will be one or two more groups. I’m going to go give Kali the plane and take care of a couple of other things like checking out what the Elder Gods have done with their group, why don’t the rest of you all get to know each other a bit better?”
Kali grabbed Mai’s hand, and collected Aria from Eve. “We’ll be back in ten or twenty minutes, okay?” She said. “Judy, you come too. Lilith and Eve, you stay, it’s not you we were needing to check on, and we can always check on Nuwa if we end up wanting to look.”
They left with Jerry, and Amy took her leave shortly thereafter, leaving everyone standing there sort of awkwardly until Rose stepped forward. “Okay, so it seems you all have met each other before, but we’re still strangers. So…I was thinking we should explain our lives to each other, how we got here, that sort of a thing. We’re going to be working together in the future, so we might as well get to know each other. Lilith, you in particular seem to be what this whole thing is revolving around, would you like to start?”
“You know, I’m not sure we can properly fit my story in the time it will take for Jerry to get back.” Lilith said, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly. “I mean, I can give the abridged version, but we’ll probably end up going over it in detail later anyway. Perhaps it’d be better if you all told us a bit about yourselves? The three of you are the only ones the rest of us haven’t met, after all.”
“The three of us?” Rose said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m assuming you’ve met Connie, then?”
Connie nodded. “Did I not mention it? Fortune and Kali gave me a lot of advice right around when I entered the relationship, and I met everyone at Lilith and Kali’s wedding. I know their stories, broadly speaking, and they know a bit of mine.”
“I see.” Rose said. “Well…I suppose you have a point, there. Lia, do you want to start?”
“Me?” Lia asked, blinking in surprise.
“You’re the one this is all revolving around, and I doubt Amelia wants to do any explaining, so I feel it’s better you go. I’ll do it if you don’t want to, though.”
“No, it’s fine.” Lia said, taking a deep breath. “So, it all started a few years ago…”