The goddess Adrianna smiled sadly as Alpha, her favorite golem assistant, made the final adjustments on the ephemeral formation that would soon be inscribed onto the core of her ever-growing soul.
When the ritual was completed, that core would be the only part of her soul that remained Adrianna. The rest would be splintered and shunted into the lower realms to be recycled into new beings. Each would share a common background while remaining fundamentally separate entities.
It was a necessary step for her to retain who she was beyond the peak of her Immortal existence.
Nobody who exceeded a soul score of 1000 retained continuity. It was an unfortunate fact of existence that accompanied the falsehood of immortality. With a current score of 953, Adrianna’s time was quickly drawing to an end.
Immortality did not mean unending, regardless of what those of the lower realms were led to believe. She’d believed it too – in every single life where the knowledge of the Immortal Realm was shared. Only when she ascended and regained the memories of her former lives did she realize the fundamental truth: Immortality was a lie.
The goddess turned her attention to the ceiling of the ritual room within her celestial palace and focused on the tableau above. It depicted swirling galaxies and nebulae within the Mortal Realm in hyper-time. Adrianna focused, zooming in on a moderately-sized planet surrounded by man-made constructs.
Gentrius, as named by its inhabitants.
The planet was more advanced than most within the Mortal Realm. That had been one of the largest factors in her decision to choose it over others with better resources. It would be interesting to see what happened when it ascended. Few truly advanced planets from within the Mortal Realm had ascended to the Mana Realm, but those that did generally brought a lot of new ideas.
Adrianna allowed herself a moment of amusement as she imagined the surprise of those exploring the stars when they eventually returned to find their home planet missing. But she wasn’t a cruel goddess. Adrianna had ensured there was at least one space station far enough away to be left behind during the ascension.
No, she wasn’t cruel; she just wanted to start on the most advanced planet available within the Mortal Realm. Her decision was perfectly reasonable.
Several former deities had tried something similar. However, they’d relied on creating a large enough soul splinter to overcome the cleansing done between incarnations.
It never worked.
At least, it hadn’t for the ones who shared their methods before departing the Immortal Realm. Who knew what others might have accomplished? It certainly wasn’t unheard of for deities to suddenly cease to exist. That was part of the reason there were so many vacancies within the myriad of pantheons.
Regardless, Adrianna did not feel like sharing her approach or alerting her counterparts to her plans. She’d left several contingencies in place to ensure her role was fulfilled well after her departure, and given the significant time variation between the Immortal Realm and the Mortal Realm, it was highly unlikely anyone would suspect she’d done anything questionable.
Even if her fellow deities somehow did learn of her actions, short of admitting who she was, they’d never be able to find her – provided the soul enchantment worked the way she intended.
Even the strongest deities shouldn’t be able to identify her once the ritual was complete. She could potentially stand before them without worry of being discovered. Her current self would probably even struggle to identify her future incarnation, and she knew what to look for!
The enchantments being layered upon her soul were simply that good.
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Her only true vulnerability would be during the time between incarnations. That was why she needed to avoid ever giving any kind of faith to another deity. Even paying lip service to another deity could grant them access to and some level of control over her soul until the cleansing and suppressive energy between incarnations disrupted the connection.
And there were many ways to delay or manipulate that process for someone with the power of an Immortal. It was that very power that would allow her, through Alpha, to control where the core of who she was would next be incarnated.
Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry about someone extracting her secrets from her golems. Only Alpha had been involved in her plan, and it would never betray her, even if she did allow the sapient golem to retain the knowledge of what they’d accomplished – which she would not.
She’d already ensured that the knowledge and memories would be removed from her favored servant’s nascent soul. Even if the golem should someday become a deity (after hundreds of lives, of course), the memories would not be retrievable. It was a necessary action to take, no matter how distasteful.
Even a Master Artificer specializing in golems would find themselves with nothing of value if they dared dismantle her assistant.
Not that anyone was likely to try.
It had nothing to do with the golem’s sapience or its development of a newborn soul, either.
Most of the deities living in the Immortal Realm had simply forgotten that Adrianna was capable of golemsmithing in the eons since she’d learned. It was not something she’d ever practiced openly. The other Immortals likely assumed she, like most others, purchased or traded for her golems.
And nobody sane would trust secrets to a creation made by another Immortal.
It had taken her several centuries to learn the intricacies involved in creating powerful golems – an education that had occurred well before her reign as the Storm Goddess of her pantheon began.
The timing of her ascension into the Immortal Realm had really been quite fortuitous. Just as she arrived, the Immortal most proficient in creating intelligent constructs had decided to share his knowledge to ensure it was not lost when his soul inevitably sundered and returned to samsara.
She hadn’t been the best of his students, but she was better than most. Her training and experience had ensured the knowledge she sought to protect would be irretrievable from the minds of her constructs. As soon as the first ritual was completed, all of the knowledge and memories related to her plan would be purged from her most loyal golem, leaving only her remaining instructions and a compulsion to see them through.
Seeing that Alpha had completed its task and was waiting patiently, the goddess Adrianna reached out to a group of her followers within the Mana Realm world of Erith and instructed them to begin the first ritual. The system was already primed, and her most loyal golem assistant had access to enough power to provide the promised blessings and perform a few small divine acts after she was gone.
With her preparations in place, they might even manage to hide her departure for several hundred years. It mostly depended on whether Alpha was able to handle everything with the divinity crystal she’d created. Alpha was the only one – besides her – who was able to interact with the item.
She’d filled it with as much divine energy as she could spare over the last few centuries. It should be more than enough to meet Alpha’s needs, provided no nosey Immortals managed to get their aura past the protections in the room.
If that happened, the divinity crystal would shatter, leaving Alpha unable to fill her role.
As the first ritual reached a crescendo, Adrianna activated the enchantments she’d designed specifically to control and shape the faith being channeled to her through her followers. The pain was excruciating, but she remained focused as the ephemeral inscriptions hovering above her body were transferred to her soul.
This next part was important.
If it worked, the death of her divine body would activate her new soul enchantment, and she’d be reincarnated on the designated planet with her memories intact, protected from the memory suppression that happened between each incarnation.
As long as her memories transferred, death would be little more than an inconvenience until she reached the Immortal Realm or its equivalent once again.
If the ritual failed… the largest shard of her soul would still be reincarnated on the designated planet, though it might be damaged and have no knowledge of who she was. In that case, the planet wouldn’t ascend during her lifetime – if at all.
Not that it would matter to her at that point.
No pressure.
“I will endeavor to return swiftly, Alpha,” she told the golem as the initial soul pain receded. Once she was certain the formation transfer was complete, Adrianna said the command word to set the next step into motion.
The golem did not hesitate, and she saw the flash of a Lightning-covered blade descending before her soul caught fire. It was infinitely worse than the transfer, and it felt like her very soul was being seared as the pain reached its peak before abruptly ceasing, taking her consciousness along with it.