Dom and I went to a few counselors. If the priest was lower than level thirty, we saw them for counseling. It didn’t take as long as I’d expected, and it worked so much better as we got the hang of it. It also helped us work out a few problems. That charm spell that Dom threw around was almost more helpful than fireball. Almost.

Three days later, there were two fortieth-level cardinals left, and Kat had decimated enough dungeons to reach level twenty-one. The holy days were Saturdays, and I wondered if the constructs had delved into one too many religions for that one. If you thought Dom and I were an overpowered killing couple, adding Kat to the mix made the cardinals child’s play. I almost wanted to stand back and play support while Kat and her dad ping-ponged the two very confused cardinals, but instead, I argued ethics with them, knowing that I was really arguing with the constructs who had gone rogue and published a chapter of claptrap that I wanted to shove down their throats. That turned out to be a bad idea but I’m getting ahead of myself.

How am I inside and outside the machine? How am I back there killing cardinals and still know about publishing that doesn’t happen until after Fizzbarren is summoned into the machine? Why didn’t I pull that on other things? Don’t ask. It’s wibbly wobbly timey whimy stuff that would make your head hurt. I know it made mine hurt. It has something to do with string theory, which is science’s explanation for the unexplainable. I might have majored in philosophy and ethics, but I still had to take those science classes for the pre-med stuff. How I learned about God through science and string theory is something that belongs in a very different kind of book and it is exactly why I was never going to get a peer-reviewed paper approved for anything but a garbage pail. This is the same girl who blankly had a brains score as her lowest stat and a mouthful of dirt and yet can argue that ethics and biology have more in common than either wants to admit. I argued myself out of As on my papers, but I made up for it in test scores and extra credit. College isn’t hard, just tedious. Well, it isn’t hard if you can keep your mouth shut and your ideas banal.

Pontification +1

Exp +10 (3,150,585/5,985,462)

We’d gone to mass. It was Saturday and now that the church had mandated that everyone had to attend church on holy days, we had shown up. Of course, there were only two cardinals and a handful of level ten and under priests to perform the service, but it was good enough for us. The High Priest was in bed with a malady that no one understood, except Terra, who had haunted the poor NPC half out of his mind until he’d submitted to a sleep spell provided by a very sympathetic head of the magical academy. Me.

Guess what? I had learned a new trick with Terra! It’s amazing really. I could cast spells through her! It happened when my Summon Familiar spell had leveled up the last time. While Dom, Kat, the King and I sat through a very emphatic mass on the evils of attacking the priesthood, Terra was sitting upon the chest of a sleeping High Priest, allowing me to recast my sleep spell every time the High Priest’s countdown got down to five minutes. The cardinals had protested only once the High Priest was knocked out.

What? Did you think that this would be hard? I had too. But what had we been thinking? Dom, Kat and I were wildly overpowered due to our creative use of professions and unlimited access to amazing spells that I could juggle, mutate, and pass on to others. Kat and Dom were all murderhobo in their mindsets, but I was more cautious. I’d seen them die, and while I could reset, they couldn’t. What would happen if it was me that died next time? I was the king on this chessboard and while I was powerful, I was the only reason the two of them were immortal. That reasoning calmed their murderhobo excitement enough to sideline me as the main player.

While it might have been dramatic (and it certainly would have been less tedious than attending the sermon), we couldn’t diplomatically justify attacking the cardinals in front of the king, especially with his guards standing at attendance, guards that would eventually be on the side of Fizzbarren in his theocracy. So, we sat through mass.

“First Corinthians, chapter four, verse five states that we should bow our heads in church, bending to church leadership in all things,” Cardinal Matthew was saying. The engine had obviously been reading up on Pentecostal churches. It was, however pretty off about bible verses. I was pretty sure that First Corinthians, four, five was about judging nothing before the second coming. I could be wrong. I was more of a conceptual Christian instead of a find a bible verse to justify stuff kind of Bible-thumper. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, but it wasn’t my way. I preferred to argue ethics philosophically, and morality not at all. “The end times are coming! It is then that we shall see the judgment of God Himself and know the right of our inner stupidity!” Oh, there was the rest of that verse, but I could tell that the engine didn’t have a really good grasp of the subject.

Intelligence +2

“If you have a problem with church policy,” Cardinal Matthew went on, “you have every right to bring your concerns about the almighty Fizzbarren to your local priest who will explain how you have it wrong and how you should think about it.”

I cringed. Dom slept. Kat rolled her eyes. Shadow purred from inside Kat’s hair in a way that I imagined a panther might purr at the thought of eating succulent deer right off the still bleeding haunch. Shadow was still quite tiny in size, but the power that emanated off the kitten kept Kat’s hair in a constant state of frizz that only repeated application of Disguise managed to tame. Oh, yeah. That was another thing that leveled up for Dom and I as we’d disguised ourselves in order to be able to trick the priests into giving us appointment after appointment of killing sessions. Our Disguise spells being so high, allowed us to see through the disguises used by others, both magical and physical.

“If you cannot respect the church, you do not respect Fizzbarren!” Cardinal Matthew was saying, punctuation supplied by the Cardinal's thumping fist on the pulpit.

“That was a given,” Kat muttered, leading me to place a tiny sphere of silence around us so that our voices did not carry beyond our small pew.

“And a lack of respect for Fizzbarren will lead him to come to you in your deepest hour as He is referenced in Revelations, where you will be cast upon a bed of suffering until you repent of your ways!”

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I’m only giving you the highlights here, because honestly most of it was so heinously blasphemous misquotations of biblical content and the application of an idea of Fizzie-baby as God made me more than sick to my stomach. Rather than offend every single Christian, no matter how baby-Christian or Bible-thumping they may be, I will just skip over most of it because you have to understand that it was an AI interpretation of Christianity based on a few online Pentecostal services, a horror-story version of Catholic priests, and a word-by-word, concrete absorption of the Bible.

Will +2

Constitution +2

“And when you have no room in the margins of your life, you have no room to worship Fizzbarren as He should be worshipped.” Okay, I couldn’t resist a few of the quotes that could have been gleaned from a church I’d actually attended at one time except that this version was made horrible by the reference to Fizzbarren as God. “You must make time in the morning, every morning for your devotions. This time should be as much time as you spend with your friends or family to ensure a perfect relationship with God. Then you must do it again at night as well. If you spend an hour having sex with your husband, then you should spend twice that with your maker! And if you spend all your daylight hours toiling in the dirt to put food on your table, then you should be ashamed! You should be spending that time on feeding your soul! What is wrong with your priorities?”

Constitution +1

Not kidding.

“I will show you how to make time for Fizzbarren, as the most important thing is the feeding of your soul!” Cardinal Matt proclaimed, banging his fist against the pulpit. “You should apply to the church and work for Fizzbarren Himself!!” It was the recruitment speech. “You can serve your fellow man best by serving Fizzbarren and feeding your soul first. You are fat! You! All you lot! Fat on the food of the land! But you are wasting away from lack of food for your very soul, and I ask you, which is more important?!”

Dom’s Disguise spell might have hidden the fact that he was sleeping, but it didn’t disguise the slight snore. The silence spell made the snore inaudible to our fellow churchgoers, but Kat kicked Dom in the shin despite that. I looked around at a congregation made up of mostly starving peasants and noted the nodding heads were the ones who were more the nose-in-the-air type than the hands-in-the-earth type.

Perception +1

“Amen!” Dom jerked awake saying, probably an automatic trauma response to the church atmosphere of my poor little preacher’s kid.

“You might want to enhance your Disguise spell with a silence spell on your face so you don’t wake up the rest of the congregation,” Kat hissed to Dom, who cast her a nasty glare.

“If Karma’s silence spell can keep attention off your hissy fit, it can mask my snoring,” Dom spat at her. Church did not bring out the best in my family. I was a look-for-the-crumb-of-truth kind of churchgoer, but Kat, Cliff and Dom mostly tolerated church because I guilted them into it.

“Not silent enough for me,” Kat mumbled through tight lips, more caring of appearance in church than Dom, who considered the whole world his Father’s house.

I cast a silence spell on both their mouths and refreshed the sleep spell for the High Priest through Terra. I then ignored Kat’s glare. She wasn’t quite high enough to dispel my spells, but seeing her father’s mouth move with no sound coming out made her complacent enough with their fates that she settled on a smug look that made her fit right in with the very pompous matron on her right. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

Dead Silence +1

Nap +1

Exp +20 (3,150,605/5,985,462)

“Stop this magical pursuit!” Cardinal Matthew was yelling loud enough to penetrate our little squabble. “It is a well of madness to try to become powerful like Fizzbarren, our god.”

“Makes me wish the silence spell wasn’t one-way,” Kat used Telepathy to tell Dom and I, and I shook my head, barely resisting the urge to cross my arms. “I’d like to cast a silence spell on the pulpit.”

Will +1

“I’m good with that,” Dom said, and made a move to cast which I stalled with a quelling look.

“For the king’s sake, we need to publicly remain above reproach,” I told them both, my tone the same one I’d used to hiss at them in church back home where it had been much of the same thing.

Persuasion +1

Exp +10 (3,150,615/5,985,462)

“Magical pursuit is the slippery slope to HELL!” Cardinal Matthew was shouting, and I was having trouble following my own advice, consciously forcing myself to uncross my arms that had somehow crossed over my chest sometime over the past few pulpit-jarring statements. “It is greed and malice combined into ego that makes the simple, honest man blasphemously reach for godlike understanding of a world that belongs only to our divine savior, Fizzbarren.”

Will +1

The Cardinal suddenly bent over, a coughing fit wracking his lean form until it culminated in a curious upchuck of a small black feather. I cast a glance at Dom who might have looked asleep but for the half-smirk on his face. I pressed my lips together in an effort to hide my own smile, but Kat was not so subtle.

Will +1

“How come I can’t do it, but he can?” she threw her arms up in a display that was completely missed by the worried congregation that ran to pat the poor man on the back or otherwise whisper behind hands and fans.

I did hear the king give a sigh and a sideways look that made me look to the heavens for the ability not to bust out laughing. It was not an eye roll. I was praying for patience and the humility to not laugh.

Skill Learned: Patience

Patience +10

Exp +120 (3,150,735/5,985,462)

Half the congregation was obsequiously offering water and compassion to the Cardinal, while the rest were subtly making their way toward the door as if this obviously signaled the end of service for the day. Watching the king, our family rose as he did, making our way toward side passages that we knew only too well by now, and shifting our appearances in subtle ways to make sure that we were not associated with anyone who stayed behind.

“That was a feather, not a hairball, so you can’t blame me,” Kat crossed her arms and leaned against a wall as servants and low-level priests shuffled by us in whatever it is that priests rush off to do after service. I didn’t know and I was pretty sure the engine didn’t know either, but NPCs were coming to and fro as if there was a purpose to it.

“I have appropriately scolded Spite as to the placement of said feather in the Cardinal’s throat,” Dom said, and I could read between the lines of what he’d said quite well.

“In other words, you scolded him for using such a small feather?” I drawled quietly, pulling Kat and Dom down corridors and into shadows. The two cardinals would go to the dining room after church services, where they would break their fast by gorging on the very food that they deemed unnecessary to the masses.

Charm +1

I could see Kat laugh and Dom smirk, but it was quiet and shadowy due to spells and skills. I’m not saying that churches, preachers, or religions are all corrupt or misguided by this interpretation of it. I am saying that the AI engine probably saw them all as such and was portraying them much like a pompous science or philosophy professor might would. I’d had enough of them to know that the easiest way to get discriminating grades was to tell most science or philosophy professors your view that Christianity was based in wisdom.

Intelligence +1