Tim woke up. The dreams he recently had were surely bizarre, but they were just that, dreams, and they couldn't hurt him.
Though he was as confused as ever, he was still happy when he woke up, as he had a couple of reasons to be happy about. For a start, he survived a heart attack, which is something that not everyone could say about themselves, or their loved ones, he got lucky.
Secondly, he was happy because he never saw Arvena be this affectionate before! She had been watching over him for hours now, and had poured several hundred points of mana on his chest, which was very selfless from her side, and in this case, uncharacteristic. This same woman had risked their lives a couple of times before, for purely selfish reasons, and now she was trying really hard to keep one of these same people alive! It was weird.
Not to mention, she had spent thousands of points helping Georgie the dragon escape from that ice trap earlier on, which too was quite selfless. No one in the group could understand why she was being so kind all of a sudden, but they didn’t want to question it, and hoped that this selfless episode would last forever.
“Thanks for not letting me die,” Tim said to her, and made sure that she acknowledged his gratitude, because he looked her straight in the eye. “I appreciate it.”
“I couldn't let you die,” She said, though her eyes then disappeared within the coat of the night, because she stood up. “Some god is messing with us, and if you died, the gods would ‘win’. You do not want to die right now, because if you go to hell, you'll be considered a trophy up there, the gods do not like most of our universe, or anything we stand for.”
She may have a point there. The micro-universe of Valporovus and its inhabitants were known for their open defiance, a defiance which they put up against the Gods of Mana, otherwise known as the ones that oversee the main universe. The main universe featured the world that Timothy and his friends were from, that's where all the big things happened, and it was under this strict control of the divine.
Anyway, Valporovus defied the God's Punishment Realm openly to be more specific, and they defied it the most, because they did not believe in the ruthless killing of random practicing mages! That's what this realm of mana quality often did, it randomly killed practicing mages while those mages tried to ascend. It wasn't difficult to find the heart to defy such a ruthless punishment amongst the mortal kind, no.
The common mage could avoid this punishment, if they sought refuge by hiding within Valporovus. It was a haven for the common mage, and this was perhaps why the gods despised this place! Most inhabitants and refugees from this micro-universe, would be considered trophies up there in hell, that is, if a mage had been unlucky enough to be killed by one of the Mana God's soldiers.
Valporovus’ stance was despised by the gods, because the gods believed that no one should evade punishment. They believed that it was up to them to decide regarding who would get punished, and this perspective was a power-trip without a doubt, but they were consistent about their stance!
Anyway, since the gods technically could not meddle in Valporovus directly, they seek out other ways to mess with many of the mages. Arvena caught up with this issue, and she caught up fast!
Since the gods could not punish Tim or his friends in a divine manner, they tried to punish them in other, physical ways, which can be far more brutal in comparison. If the team was punished ‘divinely’ then they'd die while trying to ascend through levels of mana quality, for example, which was a quick death, it would be more humane. But unfortunately for them, it would appear that they weren't being punished divinely, but rather devilishly instead, because as mentioned, the gods could not directly meddle in this universe.
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“I think that ape summoned the blizzard,” Arvena suddenly announced, “I missed it before, but the signs were all there!”
“What?” Tim asked.
It would appear that she had thought about this topic for hours now, because she immediately came up with answers, she described. “The ape never died, it was just making us think that it did. Then it summoned the blizzard, and taunted us with the caracasses of some other poor bastards that it had killed in the past, each of which had to have been mages. Don't you see it? The ones frozen in ice were also punished here in Valporovus, the gods are known to assume sub-physical forms in order to punish who they can't reach spiritually! The gods really want us dead, and that ape had to have been a god of sorts.”
There was a lot to catch up with here, and Timothy had it especially difficult to follow along considering that he was knocked out cold for hours up until now, but he did understand half of what the other said. Come to think of it, a lot of what she said correlated with his recent, weird dreams!
“No wonder I never got any points from ‘killing’ that ape,” He thought.
Afterwards he told the group, “I saw the ape in my dreams, he was waffling about me not being able to kill gods. He said something like that, though I didn't think much of it.”
“Darn it, I'm afraid to sleep now.” Ortana added, she was curled up near the campfire.
“Shush,” Arvena urged, “What else did the ape say? This is really important, so try to remember everything you saw!”
Before Timothy could've answered, Skendus interrupted them. He called out for attention, summoned these three fat eyes, and had them hover over the campfire.
Afterwards, he shaped the eyes into those three symbols that Timothy had seen in his dream. Those being a triangle, the letter H, and a cross with slightly curled arms!
He then followed along, “These are the symbols that he saw in his dream, and the ape also told him that The Punished are marked by Falakame, whatever that means. Are you able to decode any of this, Arvena?”
Arvena did not answer immediately, she was pondering everything over. Skendus did a good job here explaining what Timothy had seen, he explained things quickly, but this didn't really help make much sense of things! In fact, everything became even more confusing.
“I have no idea what any of that means,” She eventually admitted, “It's beyond me.”
Neither of them wanted to hear such an answer from her, but it was the truth, and nothing but the truth. Arvena was stumped, she was clueless, and this was very demotivating because she was their last hope regarding the matter, because if she was clueless then the group was symbolically retarded in comparison!
Anyway, minutes later, Skendus suddenly got a big smile on his face. He routinely browsed through the brains of everyone around him, apart from Arvena who refused his powers, however her defiance did not matter right now, because he found something very important within the brains of the dragonflies!
All seven of them were picturing one of the symbols in their head, from the same bundle of symbols that Timothy had seen in his dream. They've been grunting about it for a couple of minutes now, but everyone assumed that they were just hungry or something, they didn't think of it as much. However, when he saw a very visual image of a cross in their heads, he immediately understood that the dragonflies knew something of value!