“...” Isil did not reply to the words.

“We knew you would come, whether through your own choice, or by their guidance. This meeting was inevitable, a confluence of the rivers of fate. Here, the future is uncertain… even the greatest amongst us could not see all the outcomes. It is why we must -”

“Stop. Please, just stop for one minute.” Isil finally snapped back to reality.

Needless to say Belleb’s first words had caught her completely off guard. Though she didn’t know exactly how much the reality-warping event had affected everything, she had suspected that the divines had been affected like everyone else, and would not remember her. Then again, it wasn’t like she had any actual experience in things like that, so her guess was about as worthless as sawdust. Even still, the words had given her quite a shock, and left her unable to straighten her thoughts for a couple sentences.

“Could you please start from the beginning? What happened to you and the rest of the divines? What are these pieces of my desire you speak of?” Isil asked, trying to give Belleb an understand of how little she knew.

“Very well. Time is limited. I fade away with each passing moment.” As if on cue, Belleb’s glowing green-red aura dimmed slightly. “On the day, of which you know, every one of us felt it. A greater power, a being far above divine began to work their will into the world. It attempted to cut something off from the world, like a leech from the skin. But stubbornly, it hung on by a thread. So, the being created legions to destroy the thread from the inside.”

Here, Belleb stopped. His eyes had long since began to mist over, and his aura was hardly visible. Isil could tell that he was close to death. She didn’t know how exactly divine energy interacted with mana, but in desperation, she flooded Belleb with her own mana. In an instant, she felt her connection with it shatter, the backlash causing her internal injuries. However, she continued to fill him up with mana until she exhausted her reserves.

It took a moment, but Belleb’s aura flared to life once again, and the mist in his eyes were banished.

“My thanks,” He said, before returning to the story. “However, disaster struck upon creation. Something had happened to the being, and his creations came out flawed. They did not seek out the destruction of the thread, but instead of us divines. Aeteurs and Daemons came together to destroy the legions. We failed. Demise, for all divines, are imminent.”

Isil felt a chill run down her spine at his words.

“The being did not stop his creations, and we have failed to understand why. However, before the legions could descend to the mortal plane and destroy our avatars, the being reined them in at last. By then, it was too late. His death, as well as ours were all but certain. What happened after, I do not know.”

“I see…” Isil muttered. “That certainly clears some things up, but you have yet to mention these ‘pieces of my desire’.”

“Before our defeat, we shattered their object of summoning. To prevent any more from coming into this world, we scattered the pieces across the mortal plane, where they cannot walk. I hold one of these pieces.”

Belleb stretched out his hand, a small light took form in the space above his palm. The light quickly dimmed and revealed its true form. It was a broken corner of a something flat and wooden. Multiple glyphs were etched into it, along with runic lines that lead off the piece, presumably to the other pieces. Belleb motioned with his hand, gesturing for her to take it. Isil complied, gingerly picking up the piece, slightly afraid of what it might do to her.

“This is one of the seventeen pieces that made up the object of summoning. The legions retained six pieces. The other eleven have been brought here, in hopes of keeping it hidden from the legions. I know not where the other pieces are. However, these pieces resonated with other pieces. They seek to once again be whole, to once again birth legions. It does not matter how you use it, but you must not let the existing legions obtain the rest of the pieces. That is the only request I have of you.” Once again, Belleb stopped, his aura lingering near depletion.

“The thread,” Isil spoke quietly. “What of the thread you spoke of?”

She didn’t need to hear the answer to the question. In fact, she was fairly certain she knew the answer. However… she needed to confirm it. The thread was what started this whole affair, what caused her to be sent on this journey. It was changed her so much. The thread was the key – the epicenter of everything. She could afford no mistakes on its topic.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

To answer this question, Belleb simply rose his finger, and pointed at Isil.

“You.”

Isil sighed. It was indeed exactly what she thought it was. She was responsible for the deaths of the Creator and the divines. She had single-handedly destroyed all higher spiritual powers, without even knowing. These ‘legions’ were likely to be hunting her for all her life, fulfilling their original purpose. She just hoped they had abandoned their purpose after going berserk, and she would not be hunted by divine-killing beings.

“Now,” Belleb suddenly proclaimed. “I bestow upon you two gifts. My first, a scrying of the rivers of fate. It has been seen, by all of us. With no doubt nor uncertainty, you will arrive in the legions’ realm, and come face to face with them. Here, no matter what path you embark upon, you meet your greatest enemy. And at the end, though the means and circumstances remain unknown, you will meet your death at their hands.”

Isil felt her heart jump into her throat. The nature of time wasn’t something she understood. How it worked, how it could be manipulated – these were all things she didn’t know a thing about. So when her death was proclaimed, after the initial terror, she comforted herself with a small hope that their predictions could be wrong, that her path was not already laid out for her. She held out hope, that the divines saw wrong, that mistakes were made in their final moments.

“My second gift. A gift of power. I will use what is left of my divine energy, and widen the depths of your mana. It is nothing compared to what I was once able to do, but it is a gift precious nonetheless.”

Isil’s mental turmoil was interrupted by a physical turmoil as Belleb poured his divine energy directly into her. The pain as her mana pool was forcefully expanded was thankfully far less than she had been led to believe, but it still doled out its fair share of pain. Isil kept herself from screaming, but she found it hard to stand. She broke out in sweat as she slowly fell to a knee.

It ended a moment later, leaving Isil gasping for air. Belleb said something, but Isil couldn’t hear his weak voice over her labored breathing. She looked up and held her breath, quickly straining her ears so she could hear if he had anything important to say. Unfortunately, Belleb’s avatar was already turning transparent, and disintegrating. When she looked up, she only managed to catch him whispering something before his body turned into ethereal dust, which quickly vanished into nothingness.

Now completely alone in the ruins, her goal achieved, there was nothing left for her to do.

-_-_-

The night was slowly shifting into dusk, the sun rising over the plains in the East. Isil caressed the wooden shard, feeling the slight pulse of an unfamiliar energy. She touched it with a tendril of mana causing a reaction in the shard. It was extremely faint and inaccurate, but the shard allowed her to sense certain locations, presumably where the other shards were located. Based on the distances between some of them, she could assume that not all of them were located on Tyverra.

Three were located in Tyverra, one to her East, and the other two to her West. There was another located far in the North, past the Necess Dynasty and likely buried somewhere in the Icelands. Two were located to her Southeast, most likely were the Delta Islands were located. Three more were located directly South of her, but far enough South that they likely resided in the Continent of Segoe. The final piece was located a long distance Southwest, on the Gomggoth Continent.

Curiously enough, Isil sensed no pieces on the continent of Juen, the homeland of the demon species. She wasn’t quite sure why that was, but it made her mission much easier, now that she did not have to scour Juen for a wooden shard smaller than her palm. Of course, she still had to search both the Icelands and Gomggoth for a single piece, but Juen was far more massive than either of them, so much so that it would easily be able to fit both of them in its own area.

According to the lore, Tyverra, Segoe, and Gomggoth all had an area somewhere in between the US and all of Europe, roughly 10 million square kilometers. Both the Icelands and the Delta Islands were far smaller, less than a million square kilometers. However, Juen was even larger than Asia – it was over 50 million square kilometers. It would take years to find the shard, even with the location ability of the other shards.

“What am I going to call these things?” Isil wondered to herself as she leaned against an ancient pillar. “Something simple would be good… Legions’ Shard? Belleb referred to the summons as ‘legions’, so I think that would work…” Isil thought for moment. “Yeah, that sounds good. Let’s go with that.”

Isil nodded and stored the Legions’ Shard in her storage pendant. However, the shard would not enter the pendant.

“Huh? It can’t enter the pendant…?” Isil remarked.

Isil tried again, to no avail. She repeated the actions a few times, even trying to physically shove the Shard into the pendant, but found it fruitless. Eventually, she gave up and simply shoved it into her pocket. Slightly annoyed, she kicked the ruined base of a pillar. She quickly jerked back her foot with tears in her eyes. The pillar was harder than she expected. She hopped on one foot, holding on to the injured one in an attempt to soothe the pain. It was only after the pain had subsided that she remembered she knew healing magic.

Doing her best to ignore that embarrassing moment, she thought about her next course of action. To get the whole story and return to Earth, she needed the rest of the pieces. She wanted to run off in search of these pieces immediately, but she knew that wouldn’t be wise. If she knew anything about where they might be hidden, then she could do that, but she had no idea where the divines hid their shards. It could be in their ruins, in the hands of a noble, or even in the middle of some random forest.

Isil didn’t want to waste time while she didn’t know what was happening to her original body. She needed to be efficient, and as quick as possible. Luck would certainly be useful as well. In this situation, she only saw two possibilities. First, she would set out on her own, stick to the shadows and secretly gather the pieces. Second, she would utilize her guild and have her guildmates join in on the search.

There was one reason why she didn’t immediately go with the second option, the most obvious choice. They had known Isil for a longer time than he had. Even if he created her, she was simply a puppet dancing with the flicks of his fingers. She had no emotion, no soul, no life. She served as a conduit to carry his choices. Now he was the puppet, who had to move without strings, without knowing the dance he would make, no puppet master to guide the show. A single mistake, no matter how small, could ruin him forever.

Fear. That was the reason Isil did not choose the easiest path. Death could come far too easily for her liking. However, she risked much by not choosing the second path. Distancing herself from long-time comrades could cause the dreaded end to arrive faster than keeping the act. So while either road could take sudden detours to death, the first option could help her handle the off-roads better. It was at this point, she realized the metaphor was breaking down.

There was one question Isil had to answer before she could move forward.

Would she trust in her ability to hide her true self, or would she hide from a righteous wrath?