INTERLUDE 7
DEUS seethed at the table of her peers. Anger which was expressed with flashes of lightning. They crackled inside the swirling clouds that made her up. Promising instant death if they struck you. If she existed physically on Existentia, it would have been the worst thunderstorm of living memory… No, that wasn’t accurate. It would have been the most terrible event to ever impact it. Multiple kingdoms would have been obliterated in moments. A divine’s fury was not something that could be endured.
Luckily, she was in the one location where that didn’t matter. She was in the GOD’s meeting chamber and rules of physics and divinity did not work quite so absolutely there.
Her gaze pinned one of the new arrivals, and it contained unfathomable fury. “You. Broke. Our. Deal.”
MAKROS almost smirked in response. “What one? Not the one you cheated on before it even started?”
“I did no such thing! SUPREME oversaw it. You are twisting, lying and deflecting like you always do you homicidal piece of shit. You asked me to step aside, and I did so. Things played out precisely as per our agreement.”
“Then tell me DEUS. Why did innocent you receive a mark for the stunt if everything was done so perfectly by the rules?”
“Because I shouldn’t have received a mark.” She glared at SUPREME. “I was given it only because of the deal we did. They were dead, and half a step through the reincarnation process. Of course, I knew the titles weren’t restricting them anymore. Yes, I had set things up for Michael to talk, but my expectation was that I would have the opportunity to step in and stop him from saying something he shouldn’t. You MAKROS stopped me from doing that. You prevented it based on the terms of the deal. IF you think about it. You’re really responsible for his reincarnation.”
“You should have thought about the consequences before you agreed to the deal.”
DEUS huffed. “Let’s not kid ourselves. If I had tried to change the setup, you would have cancelled everything immediately.”
“Rubbish. The consequences of letting Michael speak paid for some of the cost of the rest of the concessions. How you only got punished with a single mark remains a mystery.”
“Because you were deemed partially responsible.” SUPREME said, appearing bored. “It was in your interest to relax that part of the restrictions, but you refused to try to get DEUS in trouble.”
“Absolutely pathetic,” DEUS chimed in, sounding annoyed.
“It is still bull shit. Vidja, Gerald and Selena all developed fate techniques as a direct consequence of Michael’s words.”
“No, we’ve been over this.” SUPREME interjected. “Only Gerald’s development was caused by that incident. The others would have discovered it by themselves soon enough. There were enough legal clues scattered around.”
“So, you claim.”
DEUS radiated mocking amusement, which she wielded like a finely honed sword pressed up against their exposed necks. “You’re just salty that your human behavioural models didn’t work. That Tom wasn’t resurrected.”
“Because you cheated and somehow SUPREME claims you didn’t, but I know you did.”
“We’ve had this conversation a number of times. It’s not my fault that you assumed that Tom was the only one in the group capable of having a moment of genius.” DEUS stated. “Do you really think I was that stupid. I had an entire tutorial’s worth of time to identify and select for the trait. Even if the natural population only had one in a hundred thousand possessing it, those in the competition were always going to be those elite. How else would I do it? You were an idiot for having the assumptions you did.”
“So, you claim, but I’m convinced that you cheated. Why else wouldn’t you share hers and Michael’s memories.”
“To not give you the advantage.”
MAKROS’s clouds grouped up with subtle flashes of lightning going through him. “You primed her.”
“Did I?” Some of her anger had faded as she remembered her past achievement. MAKROS might publicly claim otherwise, but he knew the truth that he had been beaten fair and square. “Or was there something else in play?”
“You’re not that smart. We worked out the why. Michael, Vidja, Rahmat and Tom weren’t selected for strength and leadership. And if Clare or Selena had have died, they would have been in the same boat. On face value, they’re the same as the others, but their success comes from why they’re being selected rather than the results. Don’t they?”
DEUS at least the outer shell of her was almost purring while the inner had crackling bolts of lightning continually arcing through her. “I made no pretences. The reason for my actions were never hidden and honestly reincarnating is costly. I was never going to waste resources on anyone but the best.”
“You denied it in earlier conversations, but are you willing to admit it now? Your policy is only to reincarnate those with a spark of genius.”
“Admit it? Why would I bother? It’s been self-evident from the start and completely within the rules.”
“Agreed,” SUPREME affirmed. “DEUS even checked with me before she went down the path.”
“Oh, I worked that all out immediately after your little stunt,” MAKROS told her. “When Michael demonstrated his spark of insight that blew apart my model it all became very clear. Clare just crystallised the size of the issue.”
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“Which is why you did what you did.”
“Why?” MAKROS laughed. “Juston its own. It was enough. But yes, that’s why. Plus, we had already warned you about Tom. I couldn’t go after him directly, so this workaround is my solution. A collective threat of reincarnated people all of whom I suspected possessed the so-called stroke of genius. That I could justify spending resources on. So, I did, because it felt good to tear apart your plans.”
“So many competitions of gathering resources to be burnt on this one.”
“Playing by the rules was boring. It was time to win and have some fun.”
“And that’s why you did the curse as well? Fancy wasting resources to target one specific mortal.”
“Fancy risking a competition by delaying the reincarnation of one mortal.”
DEUS just sent a wave of amusement at MAKROS in response to that attack.
“Plus, I had nothing to do with his blessing.” MAKROS reminded her. “That was FAMES. The fact it’ll stop him from slipping under the radar is not a problem is it. We all want our champions blazing bright and lighting up those around them. It would be a shame if they were eliminated as they did so. Don’t you think DEUS?” He grinned at her in amusement.
The internal core of DEUS, the suppressed violence and hostility, won the internal battle and the civility that had cloaked her vanished, leaving her raw anger on display once more. “You are despicable! What sort of weak person goes after children.”
MAKROS laughed at that. “I’m in this one to win. Not that your allegation is accurate. An adult mind in a child’s body is not a child.”
“No, but how many hundreds of children have you killed to eliminate each of the reincarnated you’ve been successful with.”
“That’s on you, not me. You were the one who forced my actions.”
“Stop this pointless squabbling. I’ve heard it all before and it’s not why we’re here.” SUPREME interjected. “There’s no point rehashing old news.”
DEUS’s internal storm took on an additional icy touch. “They killed every last one of the tudons. They broke multiple parts of our agreement in doing so. They need to be punished, stripped of everything. For goodness sakes, his dragons seized a racial trait. That one’s specifically outlawed.”
MAKROS continued to appear unconcerned. “We’re happy to suspend that benefit until after the competition.”
“Suspended? No! It has to be permanently stripped,” DEUS snapped. “SUPREME! Enforce the contract.”
“I’ll act as required at the end. I want to see the full list of concessions before inserting myself. A negotiated outcome is always better.”
“With it! With MAKROS negotiating, there is no chance of fairness being volunteered.” DEUS said.
“Then I’ll act then.”
“They also wilfully ignored the clause that prevented them from killing more than half a species fighting force.”
“We will give up all ranking points from the activity.” MAKROS answered her. “And it wasn’t our fault that their fighters kept attacking us. We were willing to leave them be, but they kept attempting to ambush us. And completely unprovoked as far as I am concerned. We had even told them we didn’t want to kill any more of them. ”
“Your forces were slaughtering the tudon’s breeders and eggs! All of them! You were committing genocide.”
“They were not part of the fighting force. Which meant they were free game with no probation against killing them. And my forces have a right to protect themselves from outside aggression. That’s why all the tudon’s fighting forces were wiped out. Their fault not mine.”
“There was a probation,” she snarled. “The agreement stated that neither species may participate in a grand extermination campaign.”
“It’s hardly grand if we’re only murdering tudons.”
“That’s semantics… Justification after the fact. You deliberately breached three different clauses of the agreement.”
“You’re just angry, that your little pets, from four competitions ago got wiped out. Very careless of you DEUS. You keep preaching that the GODs responsibility is supposed to extend beyond the end of the competition. And now one of your recent species has gotten completely destroyed. To an egg I believe. To be honest, you barely seem to be affected by this. I would have expected more emotion.”
“I’m not just angry. I’m APOCALYPTIC.”
MAKROS swirled in amusement. “No. You are soft.”
“They didn’t deserve to die. It was xenocide.”
“What can I say? My champions were bored, and I didn’t have enough control to stop them.”
“That’s a lie. This was a coordinated action with FAMES.”
“Can you prove that?” MAKROS asked quietly. “Because as I see it as a consequence of his insects also eliminating the tudons, I forfeited a lot of ranking points. To be honest, I’m rather angry at the outcome.”
If DEUS was human, she would have been crying and screaming at the same time. Instead, her body was a blizzard filled with lightning streaks. “Was killing the tudons just revenge to you? Please tell me this wasn’t just because you lost out with Tom. Please tell me this wasn’t about a mortal.”
“You extorted significant concessions out of us for zero return. Do you really reckon we’d sit there and not react? I’m not saying this is a direct consequence, but were you so naïve that you believed I would do nothing? This feels like a suitably proportional response to me.”
“I expected you to abide by the terms we put in place and if you didn’t that you’d be punished accordingly.”
“Abide. I expected you to stop Tom from reincarnating, but you didn’t.”
“The contract was to make me do nothing while the humans with the existing setup decided without any further divine intervention. That’s exactly what I did and got penalised a mark because of it.”
“You did nothing after already stacking the deck to get the outcome you did. You cheated.”
“Your abject failure to complete, accurate modelling of only eleven sapients, in a restricted space, on just a single topic, is not my issue.”
“Am I also a failure because I failed to dictate my people’s actions? Probably not. After all, it wasn’t one of my favourite species that got wiped out.”
“Yes, you are a failure for that as well.”
“Funny it feels more like a success.”
“Their actions and your inability to stop them broke an agreement and you’ll pay for that.”
“Agreed. It was very unfortunate that I breached those terms. And I’ve volunteered appropriate penalties for my lack of oversight. Isn’t that correct SUPREME.”
“The offered concessions for the first offence are sufficiently steep and costly. There is no further action required.”
“Steep? They were a slap on the wrist. His people killed all the tudons. Drones, fighters, breeders and eggs. They’re all gone. A billion sapients. What’s been volunteered is not nearly enough.
“I’m very sorry DEUS, but I’m restricted by the rules. For the first offence, the penalties are sufficient. What do you want me to say? The dragons have lost a third of their ranking points. The insects a quarter. It’s a massive penalty. Instead of them being almost uncatchable they are vulnerable now.”
“Yes, I’ve given you a sporting chance.”
“Shut up MAKROS,” DEUS yelled.
“No one wants to hear you speak.” SUPREME told him. “What you did was immoral and disgusting, but I can’t make a judgement on a values basis. What I can assure you of is if this happens again, I will not be so forgiving. My response won’t be restricted to the competition and mark my words because of this stunt the contract will remain partially binding for ever. You will not send your people to war against the humans now or in the future or I swear I will go to war personally on Existentia’s surface. If I do that, I’ll wipe out every shit stain of a species you ever brought into Existentia.”