“You know, I have been with you for a grand total of less than two days, but I think I have started to figure some things out about you. Any situation you end up in is never just a simple one, is it? Even taking you when you first arrived, it went from a simple questioning to involving one of our three Saint’s and the involvement of a God. You can’t even dream normal dreams without something divine based happening if the two dreams that I’ve been a part of have anything to say about that. All of that to say this: give me the bad news. Give me that first, because I can’t see the information you’re about to provide me as anything worse than what is happening currently.”
“I would say that I take offense to that, but I’m starting to think that you’re not far off in your assumption. Hell, we met not one but two Divine beings last night, and that’s hardly the strangest thing that’s happened to me since I became Luna’s Saint... mainly because that’s not the first time that I have met two godly divine beings at once…”
Suamalie wore the face of wanting to ask me a question so, so very badly. Taking a breath and the question she wanted to ask got pushed to the side. What followed was a very curt response. “Bad news. Now.”
“Bad news, all righty then. They know where I am. They might not know who I am per se, but they certainly know that they were being viewed from up here; because as soon as I saw what was down there including the divine energy surrounding the actual monsters, they all turned to look up here. I also noticed that they were staring up at the wall in a few spots. That tells me that there are a few other divinely blessed people, whether those people know it or not I’m not sure, but considering how those things reacted to me using divine powers to look, that’s the only thing I can think of. They have divine power and are exuding enough of it to be noticed, but they don’t know they have it themselves.”
“For bad news, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Still…” Suamalie looked out over the battlefield and swore. “Scratch that, that’s very bad news. You unintentionally just answered we’ve managed to hold on as effectively as we have. If your thoughts on them focusing on divine power are true, then they have been going after those that they can see. But the moment you unshackled your power, a large portion of “o lē ‘ai” noticeably surged into this direction. And they are currently heading this way now. So that not so bad sounding news was, in actuality, very bad news for us in particular. We need to move from here, now.” Grabbing her coat from around my shoulders and flinging it over her shoulders and then spoke to me. “Well? Are you going to move on your own power, or am I going to have to carry you like I carried Lily on the way here?”
“As much as I want to say that you couldn’t, I’m more than knowledgeable enough of your strength to know that you can do just that, so go ahead and lead the way.” Turning to follow, a thought crossed my mind that I thought required immediate asking. “What about Lily and Eon?”
“They’ll be safest here, especially if you do what I tell you to do.”
“I’ll believe you, but the way that you’re smiling tells me that only one of us will enjoy what happens next.”
Suamalie simply looked back at me before speaking. “Smile? What smile? My mouth hasn’t moved in the slightest.”
“Your mouth hasn’t moved, yes. But your eyes are telling me a different story. Now, before I tell you the good news, mind telling me what exactly it is that you have planned for us?”
She stood blinking for a moment as if she realized that, yes, she was in fact smiling with her eyes before turning and briskly walking to one of the members of her staff. the most striking thing about this person was the fact that their hair was several shades of red, ranging from a dark red to a bright red, it almost looked fake. Their conversation was brief, and the subordinate’s reaction of disbelief was honestly a bit of a surprise, but after their short conversation ended Suamalie marched back to me while the subordinate all but dragged their feet behind her. “This is my Chief of Information, Lanu Vaomatua. He’s not got much practical experience in leading, but his suggestions during crucial times have never once led me wrong. He’ll be in charge while I’m away with you Adamas.”
“Not that you’ve given me much of a choice Captain.”
“No, no I have not. Any complaints that I actually want to hear rather than you not wanting to do this?”
“Aside from this being a very un-standard form of command with the potential to have you be put through the ‘Selections of Gaia’ after this is all said and done?” Lanu said looking down and bringing his hand to his forehead before looking back up. “Nothing comes to mind. Well, nothing that you’ll want to hear or listen to anyway.”
“That’s what I want to hear! Now, if things go to plan, the only thing you’ll have to deal with is sorting the reports that are scheduled to delivered on a regular basis.”
“You mean, exactly what I have been doing since this whole thing started?”
“See? You’re already more than prepared to step into the leadership role!” Suamalie said while clapping Lanu on his shoulder.
“Be honest with my Captain, you just don’t want to deal with paperwork, do you?” Lanu retorted, sounding exasperated and unimpressed while doing so.
“Who? Me? Never… Adamas, we should go.”
“I… uh… ok. Nice to meet you mister Lanu. My friends should stay out of trouble on their own, but if they look like they’re in the way, feel free to tell them where to go. They’ve been in a few hazardous situations, but those experiences are at best a week or so old.”
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“I will certainly do so, Sir Adamas. Though I might suggest you hurry along now. My captain might have joked around for a moment with me, but she already has a place she wants she be at, and she wanted to be their a few minutes before she thought of it.”
“Shit… thanks!” turning to chase after Suamalie, I caught sight of her night like dark hair bouncing up and down the top of the wall. She was way to excited for what she had in mind, and something told me that I was not about to be a fan of what I heard when I caught up to her.
While it didn’t take long for me to catch up to her, her brisk pace didn’t slow at all when I caught up to her. “Lanu said something about ‘joking around’. Is that what that was back there? A joke? You can actually do that?”
The stark silence that followed was the only response I received, though a shiver did run down my back. “You said you had good news to tell me. Since at this point in time it’s just us, I suggest you tell me that before I start remembering why I don’t like you and threaten to throw you over the side of the wall.”
A brisk change in conversation, who knew you were so good at maneuvering a conversation Suamalie? “Yes, good news. The ‘Abyss’ as it appears right now isn’t actually as big as it looks. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a large army, but when I was looking at the ‘Abyss’ using my divine power, I saw that only a fraction those things out there were real. I say real in the sense that when viewing the battlefield as I did, most of them disappear. And those that remained are the reasons as to why the monsters seemingly die in droves when they do die. I’m not sure what exactly is causing the correlation between those that I can see with divine power and the deaths they cause in the other monsters I can see without it, but there is a connection in there somewhere. I’d like to say that only about one out of every ten of those things down there is divinely real.”
“So, you’re saying that your good news is that my men and this wall have been attacked by what, ghosts?” Suamalie scoffed.
“What’s a ghost?”
“… your… your religion doesn’t have an example of someone dying physically but their essence sticking around?”
“I… nothing comes to mind? Anyone who ever died in my religion went to be by Sol, shinning light into the darkness. Why would anyone want to stick around in this place when something better awaits them?”
“Really? Not a single parable about a grudge holding someone back from moving on due to an unfair death or something like that?”
“Maybe in another Solite religion, sure. The religion that I come from states that no matter what, we always go back to the warm embrace of Sol at our end. Anyway, a ghost is someone who has died and didn’t want to move on? That sounds awful. What would tie you down so much that you stay after you die?”
“Oh, this and that. An unfair death, a death filled with regret, unfinished business during or prior to death, or the denial of your death in general to name a few. But really, no ghosts? That actually surprises me. I’ve been in contact with a few outside religions myself, and they usually have some form of ‘ghost’ or other form of… phantasmal existence. Since you didn’t know what a ghost was, there’s a new word for you to use, ‘phantasmal’. It roughly means something that is unreal, illusory, or spectral in nature; I had to rack my memory for that one, mom… I mean The Huntress once told me a story where she chased a phantasm. I always thought it was a fake story from my childhood, but if the ‘o lē ‘ai’ is as you say it is, maybe it wasn’t as fake as I thought it was…”
“So, that’s the good news I had for you.” I said to Suamalie as we began descending stairs some ten minutes jog from where we started. “Your turn now. What caused you to be happy back there before we left?”
“Oh, you know. Running bait.”
“Oh I was so right about not liking this plan. Ok… so, we’re running, what am I going to do about the…” I said as I began to trail off. She wanted me to use my divine power. I just needed her to tell me when really.
“Your silence speaks about as well as my eyes do apparently Adamas. Quite literally, the plan is to be running bait. Assuming you aren’t completely dead weight in a fight, which I know you aren’t, I need you to periodically do something divine. I don’t really care what, but it needs to be done. And judging by how the ‘o lē ‘ai’ reacted, I think it might need to actually be able to see you to know that you can use Divine power. In other words, whenever we pass by a window, I basically need you to do something flashy, and if at all possible, insulting to whatever God made that thing out there.”
“Can’t promise insulting, but I can promise that they will see me. Also, you know that this is a bad idea right?”
“For some people? Yes, this would be a very bad idea. For you? I know you can at least fend for yourself. And for me? I thought you knew me better.”
“At a distance, yes I do. I have yet to actually see you pick up anything that remotely looks like its meant for close range. Aside from your unnecessarily large arrows that is.”
“Those work just fine as pest deterrents don’t they?”
“Can’t really argue with that, as much as I really want to argue the fact that your really launching javelins rather than arrows, but so long as you keep them pointed at whatever creatures the ‘Abyss’ is made out of and not at me, then you can call a pot a helmet and its lid your shield for all I care. Just whatever you do, don’t get hurt, I’d hate to have to tell your mother that you died protecting me.”
“As heartbreaking as she would be, she very much embodies the rules of ‘survival’ a much as the most devout in our religion. She wouldn’t kill you so much as make you regret coming back alive without me, definitely make you experience what it’s like to deal with one of the ‘fittest’ on Gaia’s green earth without killing you directly.”
We slowed to a halt next to a window about two floors down from where we had begun descending. “All righty then.” Letting my divine power flow from my core to my right hand, I lifted up a clenched fist glowing lite bright blue. “Think you can find me something long, pointy, and sturdy that you aren’t going to miss? Cause even if you can’t, we should start running.” Turning towards the window that overlooked the ongoing battle, I reeled my right hand back, opened my fist so that it felt like I was ‘clenching’ my divine power rather containing it, and whipped my arm forward. The divine power quickly left my hand in the form of a ball with a small thread connecting the ball and my hand. Bringing my hand back once again, the ball of divine power erupted in a blinding light.
“You asini! What the hell was that?”
“That? That was payback. On top of being a bad idea. We should go because I think I pissed it off more than I anticipated.”
“No way, really? I never would have guessed. “
“What are you complaining about, it knows where we are like you wanted.”
“It… you… I want to…. I oughta… GAH!!! Just shut up and follow me.”