Grand Orderess Nei Lo sat in her chair with a tired look on her face. God-Imperiums didn’t get tired, at least that’s what they told everyone else, but they did get bored. A weariness of the mind that no being was ever truly free from.

She turned at her desk and looked over the scrolls and jades that abounded, and she sighed. Her court was one of the major authorities in the multiverse. When powerful people interact and disputes rise, well, one needed a way to settle that without the death of trillions and the fall of a higher realm, and that’s where she came in. She was a mediator. A Judicar.

And she was the best at it. Oh, there were others of course, some even comparable to her in power, but she was Nei Lo, The Grand Orderess, The Judicar, and The First Judge. She was there when the first law was written and she was there when the first man was arrested. Hers was the law and the law was hers.

And yet, here she was now, settling disputes between overgrown children masquerading as gods. Nei Lo sighed wearily. It was a task with no reward of its own, but her cultivation needed it. She needed it. Judging over mortals or immortals didn’t give her enough insight anymore. Her Dao was Judgement and her law was Order.

But how much could you learn from governing mortals and immortals? That was the nature of cultivation, to push yourself and your understanding beyond where it was. And so she did. She pushed and she pushed until she herself had established the most powerful court within the multiverse, The Court of Imperium.

She ruled over the celestial sects, the most powerful groups in the multiverse, yet she stagnated. She was not a true judge after all, not like she used to be. She was a mediator; she didn’t rule the sects or their behavior, only the interactions between them. She was the fairest and the wisest in the land, and it was better to go to her than it was to go to war.

And that was precisely the problem. Her power was not enough. The Law, as she had made it, was an attempt at morality. It was a way for good and evil and fairness to be judged on a societal level while keeping the safety and benefit of the masses in mind. It was the underlying order all human society needed, the bedrock of all that was good.

But that wasn’t what she practiced here. Here she was a mediator, a person who brought compromise between two powers, and as important as that role was for the entirety of the multiverse, it was not that of a Judge.

Nei Lo did the best she could within her restrictions. Her sect owned more lower realms than any other celestial sect within the multiverse, and the people living there were treated properly and ruled over by a constitution she had drafted herself. In those realms, fairness was to be expected, like the ground beneath your feet. Oh sure there were accidents and fights, and even wars, but when it was all over, everyone was equal. That was how she had made it, and that was how it was.

But here she couldn’t punish people, not her peers. That required strength, strength she didn’t have. She leaned in her creaking chair, the old thing was made from the branches of the World Tree, a gift it had given to her back when she had just broken into the seventeenth realm. Her table was filled with scrolls and jade pieces, all of them were active disputes that required her judgment by the millennium.

Most of them were useless. Celestial sects had minor spats all the time, things that they would never go to war for, but both sides would refuse to back down in order to save face. And eventually, the dispute would go to her and she would make a decision both sides would complain about, but ultimately follow. She was the mediator after all and if she made a judgment, who in the multiverse could make a better one?

But still, none of these were urgent, and she had written up solutions to most of them, only dragging out the time in a show of consideration. People always felt offended if you solved their problems too quickly, even God-Imperiums.

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“Orderess, there is a request for an emergency meeting by the Divine Beast Emporium,” a thin, lady-like voice projected.

“Tell them to wait in line,” Nei Lo replied.

“It is of the utmost urgency,” a male voice cut in. “And time is the deciding matter.”

Nei Lo sighed. Out of all of her accomplishments, lawyers were, by far, her greatest sin. They had started out as defenders of the law and inspectors of truth, but then quickly evolved into weasels, small, tiny, self-serving men that live in the burrows between truths.

“Enter,” she said, annoyance blaring in her tone.

A man materialized in the room. He was an elf with golden white skin and long shimmering hair that draped below his knees. Beautiful, handsome, glorious, all of these words could have been used to describe him. But to Nei Lo there was only one word that popped to the top of her mind. Slave. Humanoid slavery was illegal underneath her rule, but no sect followed her rules. To them, they were more akin to polite prescriptions. She was only important when conflict needed to be resolved.

“Speak,” Nei Lo said, giving the fifteenth-rank man permission to rise out of his bow.

“Roughly fifteen Lynorian days ago, we lost one of our scions. We have reason to believe that he has died, and we wish to pursue justice on the matter.”

“A scion?”

“He was a direct descendent, a direct seed of the God-Imperium Tai Jey. His death is both a slap to our face and an attack on our wealth.”

That was an exaggerated claim. Sure, scions were valuable to celestial sects, as they were to any sect, but the Divine Beast Emporium had much too much wealth for it to be a significant factor to them. And the act of bringing this matter to her itself was an insult to her time. Scions died all the time, either amongst each other or out in the wild.

“What did you lose in his death?”

“He was slated to be the next leader of the Jey Clan, a prodigy in the mak-”

“Lie to me once more and you will die,” She spoke wearily.

Nei Lo had to be strict with these people. She didn’t really want to threaten the man’s life, but that was the expected reaction that came with her status. If she had said anything less it would be seen as weak, and she wasn’t weak.

The man nodded, his face unchanged and holding the same stiff smile.

“He had something with him of immense value.”

“How valuable?”

“I am not at liberty to say.”

“And who stole it?”

“We do not know.”

“Tai Jey, do not persume to be hidden. If this is an insult then know it shall be returned.”

The elf slave smiled and his eyes went white as possession claimed him. The leader of the Divine Beast Emporium, Tai Jey flooded the man’s body and mind. It was disastrous, like a puddle trying to contain an ocean. Cracks formed at the man’s skin and burning white light leaked through as the vessel started burning itself from the inside out.

“Hello Nei Lo,” the man spoke. “I see you’re still as irritable as ever.”

“Speak,” Nei Lo replied. “I don’t have time for your prolix greetings.”

“We’ve not seen each other in ten billion Lynorian years,” Tai Jey responded feigning pain.

“Yes, if only we could have kept it that way.”

Tai Jey chuckled. She disliked him and he knew that. There were three categorizations of cultivators. Righteous, Orthodox, and Demonic, and while the Divine Beast Emporium was technically an Orthodox sect, their actions and business practices made them worse than many of the Demonic sects.

“What do you want?” She asked.

“I want to find out who killed my scion and where his corpse may be.”

She looked at him and there was not an ounce of mockery in his tone. So this was truly about the scion? A mere brat?

“Why?”

“I cannot sa-”

“Then I cannot help.”

The man looked at her, his eyes filled with anger and displeasure. Sometimes the foolishness of her peers amazed her. He had barged in here using a method meant for infiltrating a realm and expected her to help him without question, and yet he was the angry one?

“He had a child of Beast with him.” Tai Jey said.

There was a moment of silence as those words sank in. A child of Beast, child of a Primordial.

“Oh by the Dao.”