Prayer was going well, until Auna felt a pain in her head. It was like something was crushing her head from the inside out. Her body began to overheat, she fell to the ground.
“Auna!” Jensen had her in his arms trying to understand what was happening.
“Oh marvellous! She must be getting a skill from the Gods. This happens usually later in life, she must be very devoted to her prayers.” A priest grabbed her hand putting it against a device.
“Let’s see what skill she gets.”
“Teacher priest you shouldn’t be looking at her status screen without permission.” A random girl from a higher year had spoken up.
“What is this job?” Just as the priest had gotten the status screen up Auna yanked her hand back, angry.
“It is against school rules to have a device higher than novice to read status screens. Only the principal’s office is supposed to have one.” Auna held her head grinding her teeth.
“Why would you break the rules Priest?” The same upperclassman asked.
“Well, it must’ve been an oversight. Here at the church, we have several I must have grabbed the wrong one earlier. What skill did you get child?”
“Praying Prophet? It says ‘Some Gods recognize a devoted person with potential to lead their people. The prophet can hear the voices of the Gods that recognize them as a prophet while they pray.”
“Your joking, you’re a prophet?” By now many priests and a few saints had come in.
“I just have the skill. Not a job as a prophet, there is a difference, right?” Auna used Jensen to steady herself, he was more than willing to hold her up as she stood shakily.
“Come let’s talk in a more private location.” The saint in charge of the church stepped up trying to separate her from Jensen. He was having none of it though. Very quickly the saint understood they wouldn’t be able to separate the two. She brought both of them to an office, presumably the saints.
“Being a prophet as a job is different than getting any skill having to do with being a prophet. However, it is actually more common to have the job then a skill. The job has skills similar to a priest and saint, usually a mix. Even among prophets a skill with prophet in the title is rare. Some will have it in the description only.”
“Wait, so am I going to be forced into the church? Will I have to quit school?”
“Nonsense. You are already majoring in religion so there is no reason for you to change any classes. Usually, your parents will be asked if they’ll give the church custody of you. However, I fear even if we get permission from your parents your sponsors will step in. They are the wealthiest and most trusted family in this kingdom aside from the king. So, I don’t see us winning this battle. The church will probably try though. I may run this church, but it is a learning church not the head one.”
“I would rather run away to where no one can find me. I don’t want to be a puppet for the church.”
“Strong words from such a small child. I will tell you that praying prophet hasn’t been seen very often.”
“Why is that?” Jensen asked.
“Well to get a praying skill it usually takes at least five years of devoted praying morning and night. It also takes some teachings from people with a saint title. To get a prophet skill is a bit unclear. We think you need to be loved by at least one God, have a job that has prophet as a skill in its pool, and spend a minimum of eight years praying. It’s impossible for a child of only eight to have it. Unless somehow you were praying at a month old. Because a deviation of a few months has been found before.”
“How old are prophets usually?”
“The youngest one recorded in history was twenty-three. You are now, if you are telling the truth, are the youngest. Usually, a prophet is between twenty-five and thirty.”
“I am not lying.”
“An official request to look at your status screen will be issued. We will analyse why and how you got the skill as well. It is unlikely even the Bloodwave family will be able to stop that. Don’t worry though your information will be protected.”
“I get no say?”
“None, the king will be very interested in how a small child was able to reach such heights in the church before they even complete their major in religion.”
“What do you mean by that? Auna isn’t high in the church.”
“She is now. How could we not give her a place in the church even if it is just honour title until she finishes school. She has a praying prophet skill. We have some with the prophet skill every few years, and a lot with the praying skill. This praying prophet skill though? There are only two people in the kingdom other than her who have it right now.”
“Who are the others?”
“One is the head saint of the church. And the other is her son, he is twenty-four. Last year he was the youngest prophet, and the youngest praying prophet.”
“Will he be angry I took his spotlight?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“What should I do?”
“Consider class over for today. I suggest you go home and pray, see what the Gods have planned for you. The church will go through official channels to get a look at your skills.”
The saint dismissed the children.
“Why me?” Auna and Jensen where on their way back to the dorms, they had been walked back to school by a man of the church. He was a quiet man and didn’t ask why they had been sent back to school early.
“I’m here. Don’t worry I won’t let them lock you away in the church towers. Not this time.” Jensen gave her a serious look.
“You know about that? I was born in the towers, never met you?”
“I found you, you had passed already though. You left a note in the stones a simple curse to your keepers.” He chuckled dryly.
“Ah yeah I did carve a curse into the floor, forgot about that. Pretty petty of me.”
“Petty sure, did they deserve it? Yes. You should have seen their faces; it was like you cast an actual curse on them. They fretted about for weeks praying for forgiveness before a mass passing was done to appease their God.”
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“Good.”
“As for what to do, I suggest we head to the crater. The rest of the gang is doing chores waiting for us to go to the dungeon. I say we go early; I help with chores, and you pray. We can decide what to do after that. Who knows maybe they won’t answer you and you will be angry enough for us to sweep the dungeon?”
“We really shouldn’t be risking so much, you heard Mr. Merlin most children become adventurers and go on dungeon crawls with adults as training. This doesn’t happen till until a child reaches twelve. We are eight and six.”
“Yeah, but he also said new dungeons are usually lower level, and they grow to a higher level. Besides we are careful, and your door ability works inside we tested it remember? We can escape at the very least.”
“See you at breakfast first, then the crater.” Auna walked into the girl’s dorm there was not many people out and about it was still too early.
Auna went arrived at her dorm room, no one was inside. The team had decided they would get up and do chores so they could spend the day in the dungeon. Without causing Auna to miss rest in the evening. They planned to spend both days in the weekends from now on in the dungeon.
Auna decided she would pray before breakfast; they could then keep on track. Sitting down on her bed she closed her eyes and began to meditate. She then reaches out with her mind to the gods. She had done this everyday twice a day for years. She would talk about many things mostly just how she was doing, what she had done that day, and what her future hopes were. She had never asked for anything not even to make her life easier.
This time though she did ask for something. Not just empty why me asking either. She though inside her mind very clearly. I would like a face to face, or at least to hear your voices. I have serious questions.
It took about five minutes of her repeating this over and over like a chant in her mind. Eventually though the call was answered. She found herself in front of a table with the Gods.
“Hello child.” Lichen smiled. Patting his lap. “Come sit, Lotus is busy.”
Auna easily sat down on Lichens’ lap resting the back of her head on his chest. She felt calmer than she had in many years. Although their relationship got off to a rocky start, she didn’t feel any unease around these Gods. It was the same in her last world. He wrapped his one arm around her using his other to offer her snacks. She gladly took some.
“We just want to let you know we did not give you that slave job. It just appeared. It is rare but some people are predisposed to getting a job. It could be called random though.”
“Thank you I appreciate that to be honest I was wondering for a while. I figured it wasn’t something picked for me.”
“Now the prophet skill was a bit of an oversight on our part. You see you can get the praying prophet skill if you are loved by Gods, devoted, and have a job that has a skill pool with prophet in it. We tried to give you a praying skill, it automatically upgraded to praying prophet.”
“Why give me a praying skill so young?”
“We did wait a couple months. The praying skill can be given to those who prayed away from a church then were guided in prayer. It happens often enough. It would mean you prayed since three years old. That wouldn’t be too weird given your smarts, and your other world person blessing.”
“So, it was a pure accident?”
“We don’t know what skill pool moon slave has. We have plenty of job information, but we are not omnipotent. We were all brought to this world from dying worlds. When we got here there were no Gods anywhere, there were people though. Another God was doing the work of managing the world.”
“So how does a world exist without Gods?”
“Well, it looked like there was a mass extinction event, the God could have abandoned the world after that. It wasn’t a known world and without any records from the council of Gods.”
“There’s a council?”
“Yes, they assign Gods who want work, work. Some of us want a permanent job where we live in the space between worlds. Some call it the Gods realm. Some Gods prefer to live among mortals, usually they are immortal though. There is a type of God that is not completely immortal though just very long lived. These Gods sometimes live on worlds that are aware of Gods. Some like me pick a job like this. We age slower in the God realm.”
“So, some Gods aren’t immortal untouchable persons?”
“That is right, many worlds actually have open portals where people, Gods, and Embodiments travel for trade and leisure back and forth.”
“What are Embodiments?”
“The parallel to Gods. They are beings like mother nature or jack frost.”
“Why doesn’t this world do that?”
“Some worlds are considered closed worlds. This could be because they don’t believe in what they call supernatural things as a society. Sometimes the Gods running it prefer it. We also like to let worlds grow up a bit first. And of course, if they are too dangerous, they are kept closed.”
“What do you mean by grow up?”
“It looks different for most worlds. This one is considered not grown up due to a few things. Mostly due to the infighting of its own people. We got a bit side-tracked though.”
“Right, why don’t you know my skill pool?”
“Simply put, this world already had laws and the system when we got here. We started documenting things and learning by watching. We have figured out the rules for the most part and have even edited the system. However, we have never seen this job before.”
“Oh. So, we will have to figure it out ourselves?”
“Well yes. We did figure out the description is a little wrong. We fixed the system a while back to take out unnecessary words. When the worlds’ common language changed the system translated from the original one. This left description with things like the big, huge arrow. We edited it so it would remove extra words.”
“So, what were my extra words?”
“Born to serve a god that never was meant to be in this world. With no one else left to serve the moon life will be a lonely one.”
“Doesn’t that mean something completely different?”
“Not really. In the only language the words ‘was meant to be’ was the same word as existed.”
“What made you look into this.”
“When we couldn’t figure out what the job was, we pulled up the original translations hoping it would help. Sometimes the automated system to fix things up changes the meaning. It is a rare issue.”
“This means the God did exist in this world?”
“Yes.”
“What good does that do for me?”
“We think studying history as you are planning might help you. If you got this job, it must have been for a reason, the system was expertly designed. It would not have picked you for this job without one. Usually, I would think you had a genetic connection to an old slave. However, we checked both of your earthly parents there was no connection. Both were relatively new family lines created from new souls. Your mother’s family lived in the wasteland only for a few hundred years they came from the islands of isolation.”
“The islands of isolation were created by us when we got here. We populated it with other worlders we brought with us from our dying world. They were physically different from this worlds people.”
“Your fathers blood line started and existed in the Jules kingdom many years after we came here. So, there can’t be a connection there either. We checked the off shoots as well similar explanations.”
“The only other option is your soul. It was somehow marked in a way that allowed the system to give you this job. However, that would mean you lived on this world once. Is that possible?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t remember much from over two billion lives ago. Is it really possible I lived here in this world before my last one?”
“You had to have been created somewhere. You were not created on your last world and there were no clues really. We were told when they found you there was evidence of many different worlds, and you had been running for so long your soul was damaged. Almost worn down.”
“Do you think I might find clues here?”
“That boy claims you were born from two Gods. It may be true; you might not awaken as a God though. If you do awake as a child to being a God the council will try to remove you for training and being raised. There are rules Gods must be raised by Gods if they are found as children.”
“Are you telling me to not awake as a God?”
“Yes.”
“How am I supposed to prevent that? Will it defiantly happen?”
“I am not sure on either question. However, it might not happen you were born from mortals your soul might have lived as a God once but that doesn’t mean it is a Godly soul.”
“I see, do you believe him?”
“Honestly you both are a bit difficult to wrap our heads around.”
“Oh.”
“Time is up. We can only keep you here so long. Please live well. Let us know if you need us. We will only answer when you want us to.”
Lichen carried Auna to a door setting her down in front of it. All of the Gods who were quietly watching the exchange were waving brightly and all chatting over each other saying things like ‘nice to see you’, ‘good luck in school’, and ‘we’ll talk next time’. Lichen must have told them to let him get Auna the information he needed to.
Auna walked through the door into the orchard, she had been quiet over breakfast. Promising to go over everything she learnt once they got to the crater. She did not need others to overhear them.