The man, Finlay, inevitably panicked once again at the familiar situation and it showed in his eyes. It did not go unnoticed by those around. They frowned and gestured to the nerdy looking, amicable man to calm down the panicking yet barely awake man.
“Hello child. No need to be wary of us now. We’re not like that Goddess.”
Yet the words didn’t give any feeling of reassurance to the already slighted man. His panic grew as he woke up completely and took in his surroundings.
There were 9 figures surrounding him in this cozy looking wooden cabin. There is a window with the appearance of a rather large moon but most of the light was coming from the few candles and the small fire in the firepit. He couldn’t clearly see all the faces but could tell by their appearance that they were mostly men in varied clothes that he couldn’t attribute to a single era or region’s style.
“I can understand your reservations but atleast hear me out and then you can come to your own decision. Regardless, it is undeniable that you were about to die and yet you’re safe now.”
He is someone who has already faced much so, eventually he was able to take charge of his mounting panic. He allowed himself a few deep breaths to calm down and turned to the now, closeby man who spoke to him earlier.
“Okay. Fair enough. Go ahead then.”
The other man smiled and nodded at him approvingly like an elder would towards a good child, much to the confusion of Finlay. Still, considering his ridiculous recent experiences, it didn’t really stick out much and he ignored it.
“First of all, I would like to express our deepest condolences towards your unfortunate circumstances. What that ‘goddess’ does is criminal. But that being said, unfortunately, you were not the first victim of her unreasonable oppression and corruption.”
Finlay immediately noticed these people were also antagonistic towards the Goddess. He figured those who are able to see the evil in that being can’t possibly be worse than her so, his impression of them immediately improved slightly but he still couldn’t blindly trust their words so, he would take them with a grain of salt.
“That being said, let me clear up any confusion over your circumstances and why they happened as they did.”
“There is no way for us to know exactly what happened to you before you were thrown out of her warp shuttle. Usually, you would be taken to some facility before being dropped out into this world but it wouldn’t be exaggerated to say that she directly tried to commit murder as soon as possible without having blood on her hands directly. This is most unusual to say the least so much that throughout the time we have been monitoring that vile woman, this was the first time and where she had such a drastic reaction.”
“My guess is she tried to manipulate you but due to various factors, you did not fall for it, outside of her expectations. You must have also said something that probably is going to put her in trouble or hurt her pitiful pride, resulting in her plotting and venting on you. She obviously made it look like you had an accident and fell to death due to some foolish choices you made for your ‘gifts’.”
“She is probably going to bribe any monitoring and investigation officers on duty and cover up the inconsistencies in your death.”
‘Wow! That’s a lot to take in. But the crux of the matter is that bitch is scummy and tried to kill me off due to some taboo act she committed when kidnapping me and got exposed by what I said.’
‘Also, from what he said, there is some kind of an organization that monitors “Gods”?! By how he is speaking, he seems to consider himself close in status to a god as well? This is confusing. If what he said is true, why did they once again kidnap me from my kidnappers? Why save me? What do they gain?’
The man stood there with a gentle smile, giving him time to gather his thoughts and comprehend what he had just said. As he waited for the expected questions.
“So, why did you save me then? What’s in it for you? If what you said is true, can’t we just go to those officers and explain to them and ask them to send me back?”
“Yes, if circumstances were as they were supposed to be, that would have been the right course of action. It would still have taken some time but you’d have been back to your world within the day. But unfortunately, reality is a bit more on the rotten side.”
“First of all, you’re still actually falling down to your doom. At least that’s how it should appear to others. We’re currently in a very small domain we have set up together. Here, the time is running about 1000 times as fast. Only about 10 seconds have passed outside. Rightnow, there is a powerful illusion cast to replace your falling body. This is because the goddess will be keeping an eye on your situation till the ‘investigation’ is complete. So, you can’t just be sent out to go to the authorities, so to speak. She would be upon you the moment you show up, not dead.”
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“Secondly, we would have normally been able to offer you protection in the above case but unfortunately, we’re ‘terrorists’ or at least that’s what they call us now, the last time I went out for a stroll.”
“Third, we’re also gods, as you might have noticed, and we technically have the ability to send you back. Unfortunately, we lack the resources for that. That would be a significant chunk of resources of our already dwindling amount.”
He gave a small pause to make sure that the now, deer in the headlights looking man, is following his words.
“As you can already tell, we’re fugitives, in the terms of your native tongue. We have been subject to injustices by the same people who are responsible for your’s. That goddess is not the root of the problem. Only, a symptom of it and hence, you’d find no justice amongst their company. So, we propose a partnership! Let us help each other seek our justice.”
Finlay was just staring at the man who was not solemnly looking at him after those ridiculous words. He’s still not sure if everything he said is the truth but he certainly sounded more believable than the last god he met. After contemplating for a while, he came to the conclusion that the truth shouldn’t be too far based on how his words explained a lot of how the goddess behaved.
“So, I see that you have come to understand your predicament somewhat. As you probably guessed, we can only save you if you agree to partner with us. I can only promise you that we will not take advantage of your predicament and will offer you the best we can, as our champion. After all, you were our only hope in our millennia of being outcasts.”
“So, what is your answer? Are you willing to partner with us as our Champion?”
Finlay did not have to think for long before agreeing to the proposal. After all, what other option does he have? Turn into meat paste, splattered on the ground? But he didn’t get the same feeling as when he was being manipulated by the last god. He felt like these people weren’t as bad as their evil villain-like setup they were going for might suggest.
“Okay I agree. What do we do now? Mr..?”
The gentleman before him immediately looked relieved and laughed brightly at the sound of agreement. There were similar expressions of relief and sounds of happiness, apparent on the others to varying degrees.
“That’s wonderful to hear! And you may refer to me by the name Jinn. We would have begun by introducing all of us but unfortunately, our situation is time sensitive and even now, we’re burning through a lot of our divine energies to keep this time field up.”
He then quickly gestured towards a person in the group who was a bit taller looking with a lot of curly hair.
“Lynn, do your thing.”
This Mr. Lynn started moving his hands about on an empty table even before he was told so.
“Now that we have your approval, let us get the important bits over with so we can take care of the details in leisure. What you need to know is that the investigator will definitely eat up whatever explanation that woman provides as long as he gets some bribe. So, our plan is to let them believe you’re dead and introduce you in secret with a different identity.”
“But the investigation involves confirming your identity, so we need to create a perfect replica of your body and let it die in a realistic fashion. This would normally be extremely hard to do to an atomic level, even for gods but Lynn here is experienced in this craft and will be making a fake body.”
Even as he was saying that, Finlay could see that a white light in the shape of a body was being formed from some sort of bright particles being emitted from that man, Lynn’s, hands. WIthin a minute, he could see a perfect copy of his current self. His eyes almost bulged out when he saw how exact of a replica it was to a living, breathing, human body. Yes, breathing like someone alive.
“Okay it’s ready.”, said Lynn as he examined what he created one last time for any inconsistencies.
Jinn waved his hand and brought up a large screen showing a falling body almost frozen in place. He made a couple more gestures and then his fake body floated off the table and disappeared in a flash of light. Nothing seemed to have happened to the falling body on the screen but Finlay understood that the illusion was replaced with the ‘real’ now. The visual slowly got accelerated before ‘he’ flailed around and screamed as he got splattered on the ground. His blood, gore and bones all over the impact zone.
No matter how resilient you think your mental fortitude is, seeing yourself painted onto the ground and seeing all the gory bits of your own insides will shake a man to the core. Jinn immediately noticed his error and fixed it by censoring the gore by a handwave.
“Oops! Sorry, my bad.”
The picture seemed to fast forward after that before pausing when a certain familiar goddess arrived at the location and seemed to look over the gruesome scene with indifferent observance. Shortly after he disappearance, a couple other men in some sort of unique attire appear there, contemplating and using various weird devices around all the gory bits in the vicinity. After conversing with themselves a bit, they disappear.
Jinn, who at some point was staring at some screens with matrix style random gibberish for characters that seem to change constantly, seemed to have noticed something and sighed loudly.
Turning towards the others, “It’s done! They didn’t seem to have suspected anything.”
He turns towards Finlay with a small smile tugging on his lips.
“Ah! You’ve finally escaped their clutches now, They bought the act. Now, it’s time for us to introduce ourselves and explain to you exactly how we plan to seek our Justice and what you need to do.”
Finlay didn’t understand before, how introducing would be seen as taking up much time, as they seem to have time dilation type powers. But once they were done, he finally understood why.
To be continued