Chapter 186: The Deceiver

Perhaps Nara should have been more wary, more on edge with Orchis’ fascination of what lay beyond the rainbow gate.

Perhaps this should have been the time that Nara turned away, fearing for the sovereignty of her mind.

But John was right when he said that Nara was guileless. Tricky, resourceful, deadly: but guile had never been her domain, her mind never having felt the true embrace of Deceit.

Deceit, herself, would feel conflicted, for that was the very deceit that allowed Nara, the truthful spy, the guileless deceiver, to step within the heart of Harmony in less than two weeks.

The Advent had thought they held all power over her. Her freedom was their benevolence, a show of their mercy, proof of their acceptance. Integration with their song was a matter of time, and she’d be another performer in their symphony, willing to conduct and be conducted.

It was that stark difference in power, the prisoner and the imprisoners, the liberated and the liberators, that allowed for folly to live and breathe, to witlessly walk a neutral party—neither an enemy nor an ally—into the bosom of their most sacred shrine.

*****

Before Nara was a gleaming orb that glowed with the light of innumerous souls.

It was difficult to describe the color of the light because souls were not just a color and not just an aura. Those innumerous souls blended seamlessly together, separate yet whole. They danced and pulsed, a song of their own told through light and aura and existence.

Orchis spoke, but Nara did not need to hear her to know what this was: This was the Harmony Core. A building named for its heart, for its soul.

“What is this?” Nara breathed, unable to tear her eyes away. She could not help that her voice had wavered.

“A collection of souls. A willing collection. We know that’s important to you,” Orchis said, staring reverently ahead at the mass of existence. She could not tear her eyes away.

Nara wanted it to be evil, but it was not. Nor was it good, not in the biblical sense of black and white, sin and virtue, good and evil. It was what it was.

Nara could not deny that the souls there were beautiful. The Harmony Core may not be inherently good, but she did not sense the acid of envy, the fire and brimstone of wrath, or the bitterness of pride upon her senses. These souls had been meticulously chosen, their purity of heart, strength of will, and empathy of emotion unhidden, like the warming touch of sunlight, and the refreshing wave of the winds.

“If we may tell you a story, Nara,” Orchis began, perhaps speaking for more than herself in that moment. “A long, long time ago, on a different world than this, there was a world much like Erras. There were gods, good and evil, and everything in between. And there were people, good and evil, and everything in between, much like their gods, or perhaps their gods were much like them. The world was much like any other. The forces of good fought against the forces of evil, repeated ad infinitum for thousands and thousands of years.

“The people were content, for that was the way the world was. People had both good and evil, gods were both good and evil, and the world was both good and evil.

“No one knows what roused the change. Perhaps it was one too many disasters. Too many good sacrificing themselves for the selfishness of evil. But one day, the people were no longer content.

“‘What if we could change things?’

“‘But how?’ the people wondered. As long as evil persisted, there would be evil gods. If deceit existed so would Deceit. If pain existed, so would Pain. Even if the people could not eliminate deceit, they could not eliminate pain. They could not eliminate destruction, or envy, or hate. They could not eliminate the flaws of human nature, for those flaws existed for a reason. Pain taught caution, and envy provoked drive.

“The people pondered and wondered. They sent their best to gather—their most ethical activists, their most reasoned politicians, their most learned scientists, their most powerful essence users, their most competent ritualists, their most imaginative artists, their wisest philosophers, their most efficient followers, their most visionary leaders. Their best of every field.

“They debated and pondered and wondered for many years, yet this was a pursuit they could not give up. Even as they debated, the world did not change. Good and evil and everything in between still clashed, and many good still died to strike down evil.

“The unending struggle would not end unless they found an end. Created an end.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“And one day, the wisest philosopher posed: ‘What if we could make our own god?’

“That did not solve the fundamental problem, of course. There would still be other gods, and it was dismissed. Then another day, the most visionary leader suggested: ‘What if we could remove all the others?’

“A god in the minds of mortals to douse wrath, to sweeten envy, to soften hate.

“However, gods could not be removed, the most heretical seeker knew, they could only be blocked—something gods themselves unwittingly gave the people the answer to.

“No god could intrude in the domain of another god. The sacred heart of their temples, their inner sanctum, barred from the prying eyes of others unless invited.

“‘So,’ the most competent ritualist said, ‘What if the entire world was the domain of our god?’

“In the cradle of their very best, a plan was born: They would create a false-god.

“The very best created a set of qualifications. They sought the most noble souls, the kindest smiles, the truest friends, the gentlest hands, the bravest gazes.

“When they died, they took not the hand of Death, but to become the buds of Harmony within a garden of glass. Trapped eternally, by their own will, a self-sacrifice of the highest altruism, to become an inextinguishable guiding beacon to those willing to follow their light.

“The light, at first one, grew to become lights innumerable. From one, to a union of many:

“A Harmony.

“The light grew slow—their power was not strong, compared to the transcendence of divinity. But even the human soul is immortal and unperishable, a well of untapped potential. Against the light of the many, the territory of the gods receded, both good and evil.

“And Harmony embraced the world.”

“Don’t you see, Nara,” Orchis said, more herself than she had been previously, but her voice was still reverent, imploring, worshipful. “The Harmony is the god of the people, for the people. More so than any other god.”

Nara stared blankly at the cradle of light, unable to form a coherent thought yet from what she just had been told.

A god. A god. Mortals had made a god, to represent themselves and their interests in the sphere of divinity.

“You never cared that much about the library,” Nara whispered her realization. “You care about the soul magic.”

Orchis stood, completely still yet somehow far away, and pulled herself from her reverie. “Cultivating a researcher capable of understanding soul magic is rare,” she began. “We may have prohibited Nightmare Beetles only recently, but soul torture has always been sacrilegious to the Harmony. But without soul torture, without gods, there is no…easy way for us to encourage the development of one capable of manipulating the soul.” Her smile was a little forlorn. “Erras has always surpassed us in this. The ailments of the soul—vampirism, soul scars, soul veils—no longer exist in our worlds. With no one touched by those ails, there are few that can explore it. Not without reaching other heights first.”

That was true, Nara reasoned, her own head still spinning with revelations. The easiest way to learn to do something was to have it done to yourself. The soul was a capable learner, so long as it had a blueprint or an example to follow.

“Please,” Orchis said, her eyes burning into hers. There was no magic, no mental manipulation, just the plea of a woman who wholly believed in her cause, for all of its faults, still sought to do good. “What is it you know?”

The thoughts within Nara’s mind burned. What should she do?

*****

The next dozen minutes would have been a concerningly vague blur if Nara had the wherewithal to be concerned. She had somehow ended up back at her apartment-hotel in Concordia, collapsed into bed, and stared blankly at the ceiling.

The ceiling was calmingly plain.

The Advent wanted something Nara had. Soul Communion, as far as Nara knew, had no aspects of it that was dangerous. It was only a method to communicate soul-to-soul, with no deception, no danger, and no force.

…She could wrangle a promise from them. A deal. In exchange for Soul Communion, their noninterference with Erras and Earth, and to re-evaluate their future intervention policies. Would Soul Communion even be that valuable? It could communicate with people…but its not like it could communicate with a god, could it?

Soul Communion may just communicate mutually with others on a surface-soul-deep level, or as the consent-initiation for something more, or it may be the very thing that The Advent needed to solve their conundrum of a lack of soul magic researchers. Would soul communion be enough to tickle someone’s soul into advanced soul magic capability?

If that was true, she now better understood the exuberance of Erras’ gods over her ‘technique’. Had all of them known its potential? Or did they just tell her the easier half-truth that it’d help with the reversal of vampirism?

Nara’s crystal-bracelet-tracker had long been flung into her inventory so she could at least have the illusion of thinking only to herself. There were no pounding knocks on her door, no “Guardians, open up!”, no prohibitions of removing the bracelet in the future. There was begrudging relief that she was allowed to remove it at all. She hadn’t chanced it yet, all this time.

Nara felt the edge of the precipice, stones tumbling down that barren cliff to the black abyss. The only problem was, which choice led to the abyss?

I think I’ll wait, she decided. Her familiars hadn’t said anything yet in her deliberation, but she could feel their approval sweep over her soul like a tingling medicinal balm. If they thought she wasn’t giving a decision adequate consideration, Chrome and Sage would intervene, but they usually left her to her autonomy unless she asked of them for their opinions first.

This, Nara supposed, was a choice none of them had an answer to.

There was, however, something Nara could do. Her Pathseeker Lute, dark blue that glimmered with stars and the silver of moonlight, settled within her hands as a comforting, stabilizing weight. It was not her companion in battle—Nirvana, ironically, was what carved her path in battle—but a stabilizing weight in meditation and introspection.

She had never done this before: an open door to the receiving room of her soul, a friendly knock on all the neighboring doors, offering tea and parley. It was a short-range call, confined to the limits of her room, intended for beings that walked wherever they pleased.

She knocked, and someone answered.

It was not Harmony. She did not expect Harmony to answer anyway, and she was not sure a false-god, a divine amalgam, would be able to respond to her in a way a more homogenized entity could. She did not know much of gods and false-gods, but theorized there was a difference in will, something more focused and more directed in a way that a will of many could not achieve.

Whether that was true, or whether Knowledge beat Harmony to the punch, Nara would never know. She welcomed Knowledge into her parlor, and closed the door behind him, so that Knowledge could walk out, and no other entity could walk in. Entities she was less inclined to chat with than her first visitor.

“Hello Nara,” Knowledge said. “I have been waiting.”