“Commander Hara’Aru, I request a Miracle from you, on your Authority as a Pact Grantor!” I Called down to the warily watching planetar keeping a safe distance from the black and white spiraling mess that had already blown through the ice to the water below, and set up a tornado of temperature differentials, steam, and ice around me that didn’t impede my voice at all.
“I seek a Blessing from Heaven, that a Pact Morituri be bound into a Heavenbound Pact, for all those who may serve Heaven under the Shroud!”
His silver eyes glowed, and he raised his own hand, the Light gathering there something which threw the Haze beyond into even deeper shadow as it writhed at the touch and feel of it. “As the Shroud twists the Will of Heaven, let Heaven twist the Will of the Shroud! By the authority invested into me by Heaven, let this be so!”
I turned my head up to the stars, the horrors that were watching us from out there... and the Heavens beyond them, whose eyes were still turned away.
But not for long, not for forever.
Lines carved into another soul I was once part of, reflected onto mine, suddenly began to glow.
The number of Heavenbound on this world was pretty much always maxed out. There were always people coming to Heavenbound Hall, willing to serve and take up that Pact. I wasn’t going to take that from them.
The limits on people were by world... but the worlds that were under a Shroud were both connected, and were not.
Every world under the Shroud was eligible for Heavenbound, and as long as those Warlocks stayed under the Shroud, there would be no conflicts whatsoever.
Every dead world, every tomb world, cemetery world, or planetary monument to undeath. All their Heavenbound could exist anywhere under the Shroud! All their PACTBOUND could do so!
And if the souls in the Shroud united to let this go through, they could sponsor Powered Heavenbound and others to dual Pacts...
The invisible resistance to my Heavenbound Pact vanished, and new Runes began to burn over my soul to complement the old: hot and cold, life and death, the stars and the abyss.
“I agree to serve the Will of Heaven, and hear the calls of the blameless Dead!
“I swear to defend the weak, protect the innocent, and succor the Dead!
“I will defy the diabolic, I will hurl back the demonic, I will thwart the daemonic, and I will BURN DOWN THIS DAMNING SHROUD OF DEATH!
“I will embrace Virtue, and I will scorn Sin!
“I will be a Shield and Sword, Spear and Hammer, Hand and Foot, Word and Song of the Empyrean Sphere, even where It cannot See!
“I will seek out Evil and stand between them and their ambitions upon these Shrouded worlds!”
The new Heavenbound Pact Morituri flared over my soul, and the Light I could only feel in others was back... and if it had spectral traces of narrower obligations upon it, they were nothing, part of the Oath I’d sworn, showing that I was willingly taking upon myself to do a Great and Good Thing, and I didn’t need the heavy-handed behavior of the Souls in the Shroud to do so.
I just needed Heaven to have my back, even if it didn’t know it.
Also, I now had a metric boatload of Masteries to work up. :\
Good problem to have, I suppose?
Plugged right into the endless power of Heaven, with the new Pact Morituri on top of it, the black and the white spirals burning around me thrummed. Countless numbers of Good souls materialized from the Shroud, reaching out to touch the energy that promised them deliverance in time, feeling for a moment the reward that they had been denied.
---------
The realigning of my Matrices playing out on the Chords of the world continued for about another ten minutes before gradually winding down. Even then, the hole in the Haze decided to be gingerly respectful and didn’t come back quickly, probably because the souls up there were still swirling around the edges as the energies of the arcane and Heaven played about them.
As they spun out, I came down out of the sky, black Phoenix wings replacing the ones from Succubus Possession, black and silver and agleam with Runes that glittered like stars in the darkness.
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Standing there next to his longtime rival and foe, Bey ‘Azzar looked kind of lost as I came down. He glanced at the planetar waiting on me, then the Angelos, and the Windgraf whose Auras now dominated his own completely, and realized that he had truly lost out on something great. He had contributed many Wishes to the cause of getting free of the Shroud, of course, but it was obvious the other two had somehow done much, much more, judging both by their Auras and the incredible power of the Gear they were wearing.
He was no longer the Windgraf’s rival, or even peer. Mochtal could crush him in moments, and they both knew it.
That meant he had some serious thinking to do.
“A sorcerous Bloodline I confess to never having witnessed before,” Commander Haru’Ara said to me solemnly as I came down deftly, eying my wings calmly. “What does it do?”
“It plays off the Ritual of the Burning Heart and the Ceremony of the Frozen Soul as it integrates the Phoenix and Shroudbound Bloodlines,” I informed him. “As I burned the Bright and Dark Moon Bloodlines to make the Arcane, so I combined Phoenix and Shroud. I can easily switch Elemental damages between fire and cold, or I may wield them as healing power at half-strength.” In addition to the new Spells Known of the Bloodline, but those were minor things in comparison. “The wings are a nice addition, too.”
Totally unneeded, but they went on the stack of flying speed.
“I had no idea anything like that was even possible,” Azaia murmured, sparks dancing in her eyes.
“It’s all magic, Azaia. Just Theurgies at work,” I said calmly. Integrating Druidic and Arcane magic via Natural Theurgy for that, Divine and Pact Theurgies for the combined Shroudpact.
Heaven had forged the way. And if Heaven could do it, naturally so could all the other Pacts...
The key was the Pact Morituri. If they weren’t willing to keep fighting under the Shroud, then it was a no-go. The Shroud basically cut off the rest of the universe, forming a pocket universe of its own magic; it was how it shielded itself from the Divine. Yet within that pocket, there were still Rules the Shroud couldn’t set, because it wasn’t broad enough to do so.
And now, I had just wedged another massive crack into it. The potential number of Pacts I had opened up extended into the millions. Every single world that was Shrouded, all their potential Pacts, opening up...
That was a lot of undead-killing Warlocks who could join together to get this job done, if they were willing to stay the course.
It expanded my pool of potential recruits a lot, too.
“That is an extraordinary move,” Commander Haru’Ara said, standing there in the subzero temperature in his old fisherman form, as unperturbed by the cold as the rest of us. I had politely given Bey ‘Azzar a Resist Cold, just to be on the comfortable side. “The commitment it requires rivals that of the Hosts of Heaven,” he complimented me. “Staying the course will be difficult.”
“Yes,” I agreed, turning to him. “So, we’re going to have to provide at least one additional incentive.”
“This sounds good,” Sama grinned, arms crossed and eying me expectantly. “What kind of outright bribery?”
“Shroud-killing is very definitely a Road to the Eternal.”
Lips pursed all around, on mortals and Soulborn alike.
“An... interesting approach,” Bey Garar‘Azzar was actually the first to speak up, smiling cynically. “The volunteers you gain from such an announcement might not be to your liking...”
“That’s true, but I don’t have to accept them, either. In the end, however, the greatest Good is bringing down the Shroud. If Evil people can’t be changed by seeing how Evil treats its own on that scale, well...” I shrugged. “It is another problem for the future, and one definitely not at the scale of the Shroud.”
I turned my eyes up to the Haze. “There are many Roads to the Eternal, and the Shroud allows at least several that I can think of. It is of pure and greatest Evil, and Heaven is dead-set against it. It is a contravention of Creation, violating all natural laws. Bypassing the terms of the Profound, it spits on Axiom, and it removes all Free Will, violating Chaos with its pure entropy.
“Only Evil doesn’t have a broad mandate with it, and will instead simply see it as a raw harvest of souls that might be used for one’s own individual purposes, if they can merely take them away from the Shroud.
“War’s Road of massacre and conflict will find endless opponents in the Shroud. Conquest’s Mandate of Expand and Seize will find thousands of worlds entire ready to fall to them. Freedom has unknown quadrillions of victims and slaves to set free. Justice has a Wrong to right of a scale that even the Divine can appreciate. Knowledge will find world after world with new horizons and lore to plumb and discover, while Life, Nature, Healing, and the Elements have worlds to restore from undeath, the work of lifetimes.
“And Sin... well, the wealth and plunder of whole worlds, the Glory and Karma from taking them, will fuel all kinds of Ambition.
“The Roads are there. The Shroud can lead a lot of people to the Eternal, and striving for the Eternal is the highest right and aspiration of mortal souls, is it not?”
The Soulborn looked rather ambivalent about that fact, as mortals ascending to Eternals arguably became beings far greater than themselves, individuals who could become Divine under their own power, instead of that granted by the Powers above them.
“So, lay out some potential Roads to the Eternal, delineate what the Eternal means, and put it right out there on the website before the Shroud goes down,” Briggs said slowly, nodding. “I don’t see a problem with it. Even knowing the Road is there doesn’t mean you can walk it, even if you try, and given how many there are, and how carnage-based it is, it isn’t going to attract everybody.” He glanced at the Soulborn there. “I am aware this kind of knowledge is considered kind of forbidden lore to reveal to mortals, only something to be shown them if they are worthy.
“But that’s a control factor from your side of the equation, trying to limit the number of Eternals, especially those not bound to your factions. From our side, that’s blatant discrimination against us. It’s a magical realm, and this is stuff people should know right at the start; that there is a reward for mortals at the end of the journey, instead of something they might learn along the way.
“The amount of effort and dedication it takes to get there does not change, even if you know it is there. Foreknowledge does not make the Eternal, striving does.”
Even the planetar had to sigh at that. “Wise words, Master Briggs,” he agreed. “Somewhat more difficult to do well.”