Chapter 12—World Orders

Raptor tried meditating to understand what he learned with Fang and Magician yesterday.

He meditated for a long time, trying to wrap his head around this dark power and how he could use it to grow stronger. Sure, darkness was the absence of light. And if he had to use the weirder words, umbra was the shadow of the spirit. But what did any of that mean for him, and how did it actually make him stronger?

So far, it was only making him annoyed.

He should have been more than strong enough to be one of the higher-ranked Numbers, but it was always stuff like this that tended to get in his way. Agility; good. Endurance; excellent. Combat; one of the best in his rankings. Mental; they could never shake him up. Leadership; he was better alone. But, Technical? Now you were asking too much.

Why did it always feel like he had to open a document to grow? Why couldn’t a push-up do it? Some sparring. Some practice. Some training. Why did the extra stuff have to be attached?

His room beeped, and he rose to a tablet on a desk. Fang was calling for a meeting. She was going to steal the little bit of time he had left to give him more things he couldn't understand, and yet still, he was going to go.

He traveled quickly to the room they were in the day before and found that Fang and Magician weren't the only ones there. Ace, King, and that Micaela girl from Keke's show were there. And 219 and 255 too.

“What are they doing here?” He asked flat out.

"They're a part of the team," Fang answered, and Raptor propped himself up against the wall and glared at them.

The two were twins, pretty thin blonds that got a whole lot of attention. He often heard civilians say that they'd be stars back in the day. They looked like celebrities even now, and though he knew their Combat scores were high, he didn't see the point of working with them.

“You have a name now, right?” 219 asked him, smiling as if they were friends.

“Yeah, Raptor.”

"I'm Hope."

Raptor scoffed. “Hope? Really showing that big head of yours, huh?” He shot a look at 255. “And you?”

“Andra.” She crossed her arms. “And should you really be laughing? Raptor, really?”

He grinned, “Yeah, because I ain’t trying to be pretty. I want everyone to know that I’m the real threat.”

“Real threat? Really showing that big head of yours, huh?” Andra shot back and he scoffed again.

She had a bite.

“Is he really one of you?” Micaela suddenly said to Fang. “Like, he’s not cool and calm at all! He’s a total asshole.”

"First of all, fuck you!" He barked. "Second of all, don't get played. They aren't calm, they just know how to put on a face." He turned and started pointing. Starting with Fang, "She's arrogant as hell, always sure she picks out the right people to win." Then King, "He's not that much better than Magician. He spends all his time studying but breaks down in fights." Then Ace, "And he only wins when someone more important is distracting them."

“And you bring all your teams down.” Ace bit back.

"Who needs a team when you're a one-man army?"

Ace smirked, "The Enclave has only ever seen one one-man army, and he's not in this room."

Raptor sneered, ready to fight, when something blue and translucent shot up from King.

“Children, children!” Khalaf waved them down. “Save the bloodshed for later. We gotta talk about the fun stuff first.” He sat on the table and fully took Raptor’s attention.

“Holy shit. She wasn’t lying when she said there was a ghost.”

"Guilty. I'm Khalaf by the way, enchante and all of that."

“What did you mean by fun stuff?” Raptor’s brow furrowed.

Eyes turned to Ace and reluctantly, his followed.

“I had a dream last night. I think it’ll be important to all of us.”

Before Raptor could any more questions, Ace told the room a dream about things he couldn't understand. Everything about it was strange, from the way Ace watched someone else's life, to the things those people talked about. In the eyes of his allies, though, Raptor saw understanding. He saw it first when Ace mentioned it was a dream about Phosphorus, and again when he mentioned someone named Waas.

“Who is Waas?” Hope asked, at least showing Raptor that he wasn’t alone.

Ace looked at Fang. “I think we have to share everything with them.”

Fang looked them over, and the look in her eye said there was a lot. Still, she nodded, and Raptor got the feeling his life was about to change.

"First of all, none of it leaves this room. It's still technically top secret, and I don't think the admin is going to make it public information." If words could put a contract on the table he'd be looking at a tower of papers. "Second, I was going to tell you all at a point, but it's a lot to take in."

"Clearly," He crossed his arms, brow still furrowed from Ace's dream. "But no point in holding back now. Sounds like you should have been upfront in the first place."

She nodded, but started, going as slow as she could. It didn't matter, because he was pushed back from the start.

There was an ancient society that rose and fell long before mankind and left behind information clusters for all societies that came after them.

When humans eventually popped up, they thought the clusters were, and started messing them up with human sacrifices.

Things got bad after that.

The clusters actually turned into gods, and those gods killed whole nations, almost destroying the world.

Devils got involved and even that didn't really help humanity out.

Apparently, mankind had the tendency to shove one foot into the grave, because even after the world changed four times, they brought the same threat back.

Its name said it all itself.

“Our greatest enemy is the God Eternal.” Fang finished after taking them through the battle on the spear of hell.

Raptor's face was blank. He didn't know what to feel. He looked at Hope and Andra; their faces were blank too. Magician, however, seemed excited.

"So how Waas did help exactly?" He had found a tablet at some point and was using a stylus to take notes. Micaela did the same, though considering she was there, Raptor didn't know what she was taking notes about.

"He gave us a chance to recover in his domain," King answered. "It was like a small room, but it had all sorts of plans thrown up on the wall. We concocted our plan to beat the God Eternal there. First, make him create a dark portal inside himself. Then, let him kill us."

“So you all technically died?” Magician looked at each of them.

"Not Fang," Ace shook his head. "But you already know how that went. The important parts are that we couldn't have done it without Waas and we didn't know how to reach him again."

Magician looked at Fang. Raptor saw the deliberation in his eyes. "Your umbral powers let you use the light to cast shadows of devils... Couldn't you have summoned Waas again?"

“No.” Fang shook her head. “Much of the God Eternal’s light left me when I used the revive command.”

"And you needed him to use that command," Raptor jabbed a thumb at Ace. "So he has that light in him now, and the reason he saw Waas is the same reason he's dreaming about that Phosphorus guy."

"If light is spirit and spirit is memory, then Fang's summonings and Ace's dreams are both connected to having The God Eternal's light," Magician added, sharing his notes aloud.

"Do we have a better name than the God Eternal?" Hope raised his hand with an apologetic smile. "It's a bit of a mouthful."

Andra nodded, “So is the One True God. Could we just call him Orange?”

Micaela looked up from her tablet, looked at King, shrugged, and said, “I don’t see a problem with that.”

“There might be one,” Khalaf said as if he was waiting for that chance. “After all, considering all this order business, maybe Orange isn’t enough. It could mean just about anyone.”

Raptor's brow furrowed again. "While we're back on that order stuff, how is it supposed to help us out?"

King moved in a way that said he'd answer but stopped short of opening his mouth. The room sat silent as he thought over the words, processing the dream slowly to find the right words for his conclusion.

"It gives us a path of spiritual growth," He said at last. "Before the dream, we didn't know enough. We got a lot of our information from Cerulean and New Dawn. One of them framed everything under the lens of working for their God's plan. While the other saw luster and luminance as being no different from radiation. It gave us tools, but leaves a huge gap between us and Cerulean, and a light year between us and the God Eternal."

“You guys kinda glossed over the Cerulean stuff,” Andra spoke at that. “It sounds like they were dealing with the city a lot better than we are. And they did it pretty regularly.”

“They were,” Micaela replied. “Even though these three ruined their night, they were still up there. Cerulean’s even been to war with other domains, when I think about it. They crushed them big time, except like one. Cerulean’s strong when things are running well.”

"But they weren't running well enough, right? Fang's group beat two of your stronger soldier guys." Raptor spoke of the battle at New Dawn. "Even if they lost in the second round, they only lost because that Corrosion thing came around."

"That's what I don't get!" Micaela said. "Like, those two losers were honestly pretty strong. I know cause I worked with them a lot. They shoulda even been lightbearers." She was completely out of her tablet now, and Raptor wondered what she had been working on.

“Maybe they were just bad lightbearers.” Andra offered.

"I mean they were, we know that. No one with a halo was a good lightbearer. They used it like an antenna for divine power. Still, why did they need the antenna? Why did anyone? Cerulean had an order to it, and based on what Ace said, that order should have made everyone stronger." Micaela paced from right to left.

Khalaf made a sound that made Micaela look at him sharply. He brought his hands together in mock prayer, then floated toward the center of the room.

“You all have forgotten one very important element in all this discussion,” He gestured grandly. “The Teal Chronicler.” He bowed.

Micaela rolled her eyes. “I forgot you told us to call you that. I thought it was a joke.”

“Not at all, Micaela. I had nothing to do but watch my Castle Cerulean soaps for all those years!”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“And you just weren’t going to chime in anything valuable unless we said something?”

“Excuse you! I’ve been alone for so long, Micaela. I forget that talking to people is a thing.” He put his hand on his chest and Micaela rolled her eyes harder.

Raptor laughed. “You two do this all the time?”

"Yes." They said together, Micaela—long exhausted; Khalaf—easily excited.

Raptor chuckled again. His life was missing this show.

“What can you tell us?” King asked, and Khalaf strolled around the room.

“Prince Elias hated all the soldiers in the castle. Anybody who used a halo was just the worse thing to him, and he complained about it quite a bit. There was another person who was disgusted by them, a girl by the name of Fiona. They were disgusted for the same reasons. The soldiers couldn’t become lightbearers because their eyes were always focused outward.” He drew circles around his eyes and looked around the room. “Cerulean had an order, yes! In this sector, you do a job, grow your light, making feed for the god. In that sector you play around with that god’s power, the heart of the castle carrying divine blood through the veins. In the last, you take all the mess and make it something the God could really use. But all of this order was dedicated to the Cerulean Arbiter. None of it was about making you better than what you were.”

“So you’re saying that Cerulean blocked itself off by keeping people in their sectors?” King summarized. Raptor almost clapped at how well he found the point.

“Bingo,” Khalaf sat down beside him.

“It makes sense,” Micaela looked at her tablet. “I guess I see the difference now. Cerulean had the god but didn’t focus on the people. The Enclave focuses on the people, but don’t have the God.”

Ace offered, “But because of Waas we know that we don’t need a god. We just need to focus on the Order.”

“How the hell does that even work?” Raptor hissed. “How do you even find out what the order is?”

"It's probably inherent," Magician said absentmindedly, still in his tablet. "I mean, the Enclave has one, doesn't it? That's what being Numbers is about. With No. 1 being the highest rank, all of us are working on our skills to climb the ranks. There's even a rule that you can't be raffled to take a graduation test until you're above 100. Your age doesn't matter. There are fourteen-year-olds at higher ranks than 30-year-olds because their skills haven't changed at all. I haven't gotten above 400 because my Combat score hasn't changed in a while." He said that last bit sadly.

"Actually, I've been wanting to talk about that," Micaela said sharply. "How do your scores go up anyway? It doesn't sound like you get a grade, but it doesn't sound like a number either."

"It's levels," Hope answered. "Your score is measured in levels and your collective levels reflect your rank. Levels only go up to 100, and they reset when you get there."

Raptor added, jabbing a thumb at Fang, "Her boy-toy's level was insane. We were near his rank but his combat score was so high, nobody in the Enclave could match it. Even actual grades didn't come close. What was his total level?" He looked at Hope.

“I don’t know, but he was on cycle 20, or near it. If he hadn’t broken two thousand, he was close.”

“Two thousand!” Micaela exclaimed. “Who was this dude?” She looked at Fang.

Fang smiled, “The best.”

Raptor, Hope, and Andra laughed.

"That's an understatement," Raptor grinned. "That bastard could take on the three of us at once. Hell, he could take on a lot of us at once. When you get assigned to a last man standing with him, you team up with people and take him down."

“I hated him,” Andra laughed. “If he saw me, he’d come for me first. Every single time I was fighting for my life. I got mad at him once, accusing him of targeting me because I was weak and he said, "I'm targeting you because you'd be the biggest problem in a long-term fight." Bastard.”

Hope nodded, "Dueling him was always a trial. I was pretty good in my cycle, but you felt the difference in levels against him. I can go offensively against most of my peers. It'd be a good trade. For him it was full defense, waiting for a chance for him to slip up."

Magician added, "If you could beat him, your combat score would go up a lot. He wasn't impossible to beat if the terms of the simulation were right. But anything that focused on combat and survival put you in a bad spot."

"And he was your boyfriend?" Micaela looked at Fang. "Where the hell was he in the final fi— never mind." She seemed to realize and turned back to Raptor and the others. "What are your Combat scores?"

“C7-38.” He answered.

“C8-11.” Hope answered.

“C7-04.” Andra answered.

"And he was C20?" Micaela's eyes widened so much it seemed like they would jump out.

Fang laughed, “The highest combat score since he was eleven.”

Khalaf clapped, “And here I thought I was the legend.”

"We're getting too distracted though," King said. "Magician might be right, the Enclave likely has its own order, but what does that mean?"

Magician replied, "I think it means that we don't have to look too hard for one specific order, but find one that works for us. I bet there are multiple in the world. There has to be," He flashed his umbral crest. "Fang said these represent three keys, the power to control the dark, grasp the light, and give it a command. What if each represents its own order? A shadow order, a spiritual order, and…"

“A divine order?” King offered.

“Yes!” Magician’s eyes shined.

“Domains probably have their own orders too,” Andra offered. “I mean we kinda already talked about that, but in Cerulean, everything worked toward a specific purpose. This order stuff is about finding your role, and there, your role was pretty clear. If there are more domains out there, they all work like that in one way or another.”

“Let’s focus on that role part before you guys give me anymore homework,” Raptor took that chance to strike. “Let’s say the Enclave really does have one, and our scores are about following it. Our scores let us figure out our roles, or whatever. What roles are there? We can’t really grow stronger unless we know them, right?” He expected King, Micaela, or Magician to respond, but Ace drew their eyes instead.

“I died twice out in the city,” He said suddenly. “The God Eternal was the second time. The first was in the hells. A hunter god told me that I couldn’t unlock my divine power until I threw my human body away. I had to remember what made me, me though.”

“The opposite of the soldiers in Cerulean looking outward instead of inward.” Khalaf nodded.

Raptor asked, “So how did you do that exactly?”

“I thought about what they told us when we first became Serials,” Ace looked at Micaela, “That’s what you are before you become a Number.”

“Noted,” She literally noted it.

“Focus on becoming your best self, focus on your own score. I was reborn in a way that made me a lot more agile, because my agility score was always my best. I also chose my purpose, deciding that I was a god of revenge.”

Raptor grinned, “So you just gotta get revenge to get stronger? But you let that Corrosion thing get away.”

"For now," Ace's eyes sharpened. Raptor was starting to see why Assassin liked him.

“He can probably get stronger answering prayers for revenge too,” Andra offered.

Magician nodded. "In terms of Order, the want for revenge is a very ordered thing. You need people around who cause and hold grudges. There are a lot of gods you can pray to for revenge, but how many of them will actually deliver?" He paused for thought. "But…nobody in the Enclave really wants revenge, right? Doesn't that mean you won't grow stronger for a while?"

Hope smiled at Micaela, “He might not, but you probably will.”

“What?” She gave him the type of look she gave Khalaf. This made the ghost laugh.

“Well, aren’t you a Goddess of Mentorship?”

“Ew, no, could you come up with something better than that?”

"A Goddess of Cultivation?" Andra offered, and Micaela brightened. "So, you'll grow stronger you guide people to growing stronger. You've probably been growing a lot, honestly."

Micaela waved to thought off, but still smiled from ear to ear, "Calm down! I didn't say I was a cultivation goddess yet! But it does make sense."

“Great, that makes sense for those two, but what about the rest of us?” Raptor had to interrupt, he was sure they’d go on a tangent again.

“Names,” Ace replied. “Each of us got the chance to choose a name, and each of us has a chance to grow stronger for it. We’ve already started deciding our roles. Fang wants to bite back against the city. You want to show people that you’re a threat. Hope wants to be their hope.”

“I want to be victorious.” Andra said, almost too low to hear.

“We already know the way forward, we just have to wield our powers toward it.” He said, and Raptor nodded.

“So don’t worry about trying to figure this stuff out, just use it to make myself stronger?”

"Unless figuring it out is related to your role," King said, his eyes moving to Magician for a moment. "I think this was a good call, Ace."

Ace laughed, “Waas helped us again, right?”

King nodded, “Yeah, but you did a lot of the work too.”

Micaela clapped. “And me as well! I’m going to get some bonus exp for this one! I got some plans in here for everyone. Considering what we said about refraction points and scores before, I think we can say this about you guys. This assumes Umbra works like Refraction too, but either way. Raptor, you should use your power to boost your Combat, Agility, and Endurance. Hope, I’m thinking Combat, Leadership, and Agility. Andra, Combat, Endurance, and Mental.” She paused and looked at the girl.

“You’re expecting me to ask why you chose my mental?”

“Yeah.”

“Shut up! I know who I am.”

Micaela smiled.

“Magician should boost his technical, mental, and leadership.” She went on. Magician wrote those down.

“What about King and Fang?” Raptor asked.

King shook his head, “It’s not my time yet.”

Raptor thought about his name and wondered how the guy in the lab was going to turn into a king.

“I’m already progressing, if that’s what you’re asking,” Fang said. “When we enter the grading grounds, we’ll see that clearly.”

“One more day,” Hope said. He turned to Magician. “You’re going to be there, right?”

Magician smiled. "Yeah. Raptor and I have a simulation today. We're going to meet with our team and work out our plan after this."

“Then one more day,” Hope nodded confidently, and Raptor looked around the room again.

He laughed. "A week ago I wouldn't have said anyone in this room would save the world."

"Don't then," Ace said. "Let's say we're the team that'll give the world revenge against the God Eternal."

"Bet." Raptor grinned sharply and started to set off. "Now I'm going to get out of here and train before you guys add anything else to all of this." And then he stopped, realizing he still didn't know what he should do next. Sure, Micaela told him, but if meditating on his power didn’t work before, why would it work now? “How the hell do I use my powers to do that?” He turned to her.

"I guess you haven't really had the chance to wrap your head around Umbra yet, have you? Khalaf, what can I do?" She looked at Khalaf who grinned from ear to ear. Her regret was immediate and obvious but Raptor was happy he asked.

“Well, Micaela, a bit of godly and devilish power could help a lot.” He floated over and made a symbol in the air. “You know the story of Odin and his ravens?”

“Who?” She squinted at him.

Andra answered, “Odin is a god from Norse mythology, known as the All-Father and associated with Wednesday. He had two ravens named Huginn and Muninn, who were like his eyes and ears, bringing him knowledge from across the world. There’s a lot more, but I’m guessing Khalaf is saying you need your own ravens.”

“Bingo,” Khalaf pointed at her. “Be careful Micaela, or she might become my new favorite.”

“No she won’t, you would never let me be that lucky.” Micaela sighed. “Alright, so you want me to make my own pets?”

"Let's call them familiars," Magician offered.

"Fine, my own familiars. To what, watch and guide them?"

"Yes in fact, or bestow some illumination that might guide them toward that point.” Khalaf smiled.

“How?”

"It's your power o' Goddess of Cultivation, if you don't, know who am I to tell you?" He wrote another symbol in the air, and after a moment of staring at it and him, Micaela's hands began to glow.

She held them together as if to scoop up water, blue light filled it like a pond. From it, two "goldfish" rose and circled her. They swam over to Khalaf next and then made a circuit around the room.

“Wow, didn’t know I could do that.” Micaela said with wide eyes.

“You’re a goddess now Micaela, the old limits of your luminance are out the window.” Khalaf smiled.

“What next then?”

“Make one more, send it to Fang.”

She did and it swam over. Without hesitation, Fang wrapped a bubble of darkness around it. Raptor didn’t know where the thought to do that came from, but a black goldfish rose from the bubble, its eyes glowing blue.

"I get it now." Micaela sent the other two to Hope and Andra. They swam around them and made them shudder as they swam into them. For a moment, both of their eyes glowed a dim blue and then widened with sudden clarity.

"Oh!" They said in unison.

The black one floated over to Raptor. He held his hand out.

“Explain first.”

“Let’s call it a blessing. Each fish will bestow you with the insight you need to use your power. It won’t be King or Magician’s level, but it’ll be better than you’d do alone.”

“And why did she have to make it black?”

“Because my light would get eaten up when it passed through you.”

Raptor looked at the fish, then snatched it from the air. He felt nothing and wondered if it was a dud despite the effort. And then, as if he was always a few hours away from it, a thought dawned in his mind that made the power all make sense. It barely felt like his own. If darkness was the absence of light and he had none to begin with, then his whole body was darkness itself, and if he had the power to control the dark…?

He flexed his left hand and watched it turn black, scaly, and clawed. He grinned viciously and laughed loudly.

“Oh that’s good!” He said to the room. “I got some stuff to work on before this show gets started but yeah, you guys made this worth it.” He left quickly after, going off to train in ways that’d make the past look like a performance…

[Chapter 12 ends…]