Edge Cases

161 - Book 3: Chapter 26: S - Godly Intervention

Time splintered.

In front of Sev stood an older man mid-forties or mid-fifties, perhaps. He wore the flowing robes of a priest of the God of the Sun with the full title capitalized in his head, even, because he couldn't not. Power poured out of him in waves.

"In the light of the sun," the priest intoned. They were the words of an incantation, a prayer. "None may fall."

And it was the truth.

The man led an army. Tempus led Sev high up into the sky, so he could see the battle for himself; there was at least a thousand men, if not more, involved in an outright war. Sev didn't recognize the equipment or the banners of any of the men involved, and even the landscape seemed unfamiliar, for all that it was clearly a part of Obreve.

What he did see was that none of them died no matter how hard they were struck, even with their limbs and heads cleaved off, they kept fighting. Ghostly trails of light filled in where heads or arms had once been and simply... kept fighting.

It was an awe-inspiring display of power, but Sev felt a deep discomfort stirring in his stomach.

"When did this happen?" he asked quietly.

"In ages past," Tempus answered. The god stood next to him, a stately figure dressed in blue-silver robes; in place of a head, he had a vortex of time. Sev could hear the steady tick-tock of a clock every time he glanced too long at Tempus, and perhaps that was for the best time seemed to lose all meaning when he stared for a fraction of a second too long. He could almost feel the way causality sped up around him, grounded only by the sound that echoed in his mind.

"You can reach back beyond the last two hundred years?" Sev asked. He wondered if Tempus' power could breach the End like that, pulling back things that had already been erased.

Tempus dashed his hopes when he shook his head. "No," he said. "Not without help. This is but a small piece of history, recovered when one of my priests alongside one of the Platinum rankers of Anderstahl delved deep into their Prime Dungeon and retrieved a fragment of the past... though we have been finding fewer and fewer of those of late."

A small glance to Sev, and the priest felt the weight of eternity pressing down on him. Just for an instant. "Now you know why," Sev said quietly.

"Indeed I do," Tempus answered, his voice grave. "I have tried to speak to the other gods about this, and I cannot; they do not recognize my words when I try. But the good news is that one of your allies appears to be reaching out to the gods to spread word, so you are not alone in this quest."

That was good to know, at least.

A moment passed. The army beneath them continued to fight, though half of the priest's army was clearly dead, for all that they hadn't fallen; all that was left of them were specters of glittering light, fighting for all they were worth. The priest didn't seem at all perturbed by this, and that was perhaps the most disturbing part of it all for Sev that he seemed to feel nothing for the deaths of so many men.

Perhaps that was because he intended to bring them back, but... as far as Sev could tell, none of the divine magic here interacted with the souls of any of the people. They wicked away into the air as soon as their owners died, caught quickly by threads of divinity and drawn somewhere Sev couldn't see.

Even more curiously, Sev sensed no interference from the system. He couldn't know if any of the soldiers below were using system skills or not, of course, but it didn't seem like they were. There was none of the strangeness that he had come to associate with the use of a system skill.

The soldiers were many times stronger than most, certainly, but that didn't seem to be the result of system-given stats rather, he saw the distinct glow that he'd come to associate with mana wrapped around their arms and legs as they fought, like they were reinforcing their bodies with mana.

The Priest of the Sun still stood impassive at the back of it all, watching his army fight tooth and nail against their enemy. Sev couldn't tell what or who that enemy was, though he tried it was like whatever had been recorded in this fragment of history was simply missing one entire side of the conflict.

All he could see of them were twisted fragments of color, flashes of wing and stone and fire.

Where they clashed, light erupted. People died and rose again, golden-bright figures waging a fierce battle like they were fighting for their lives.

It would have been a beautiful sight if not for all the death and carnage involved.

The Priest of the Sun wielded a staff of sunstone and starlight. He wasn't fast or strong, but he moved with precision. Sev saw the divine energy fluctuating around him with every step he took, and watched the contemptuous face the priest gave his enemies as they approached him.

Three in particular that snuck their way past his army. Three in particular that were represented by larger clouds of possibility; Sev could not see what they were, but he could see that they were strong. He could see the magic they wielded, the way dark-red fragments of crystalline mana trailed around behind them every time they made a move to attack.

A storm of magic erupted.

Three weapons inscribed with glyphs Sev saw those in remarkable detail thrust forward, each carrying with them the force of a spell that could devastate a mountain; the power of each spell was such that he could feel what they were, even without being their target.

Magic was an idea imprinted on the mana, and the mana sung with that collective ontological weight. Here was a spear that accumulated gravity mana, strong enough it could visibly bend light; here was a sword that rang with sound mana, loud enough to crack the earth around it; here was a chain that carried a freezing nothing, ice mana that had deepened so much it stole all the energy from anything it touched.

A barrier of sunlight shone around the priest. He looked unconcerned. Sev knew for a fact that his barriers would have shattered in an instant under just one of those attacks, let alone three. The divinity pressed into that barrier should have been far from enough, and yet

And yet.

"The light of the sun washes away all sin," the priest intoned. Time seemed to slow as he spoke. He should have been struck before he even opened his mouth, and yet the divine energy building did something strange, building in cadence with his words.

His words lent strength to his beliefs, and his beliefs lent strength to his magic.

All three attacks did nothing.

Sev could almost feel the stunned confusion in the air, though the Priest of the Sun's expression remained as serene and slightly contemptuous as ever. Three weapons faltered, as if their owners didn't know what to do now that their attacks had failed. They had not conceived of the possibility of failure.

The priest waved an arm, and smiled an almost chilling, distant smile. "We are all but stardust," he said.

Just like that, all three of his opponents vanished. It was so sudden and anticlimactic it seemed unreal, and yet Sev knew it wasn't, because he'd seen something most others wouldn't.

He'd seen how that magic worked.

A small piece of divine magic of Sun divinity, specifically broke past the natural barriers of the soul, of each person's sense of self. In that moment of vulnerability imposed by their shock, the Sun divinity took over and imposed itself upon them.

What they were was written into reality as a concept, as an imposition of their souls. That small piece of divinity took it over like a parasite, flooding every aspect of them and turning it into little more than stardust and sunlight, killing not only their bodies but overwriting their souls.

Sev felt a little sick.

What anyone else would have seen, more likely than not, was three individuals being instantaneously incinerated by a brief flash of sunlight, but what Sev understood was that something far more horrifying had happened. And yet, in that horror, a small piece of understanding broke loose.

"Mana is memory," he said out loud, tasting the words. "And magic is the expression of a concept from the infinite record that is mana."

Tempus shot him a questioning look, and he ignored it.

"Divinity is the concept itself, imposed on reality." Sev muttered.

It explained why reality anchors tore gods apart to fix themselves. It shed new light on what reality shards were, even. He'd never sensed a hint of divine energy about them, but if it was encased in a shell and hidden from him...

Tempus gave him a strange look. "Are you alright?"

"I don't want to see this." Sev felt the answer emerge before he could stop himself, and he winced slightly at how brusque his words were. Tempus didn't react, waiting patiently for him to explain himself even as the battlefield froze around them, and Sev sighed as he tried to search for the words.

"He's strong," Sev said, gesturing at the image of the Priest of the Sun. "But this is... wrong. He's not a healer. He's healing, but everyone around him is dying. This isn't who I want to be."

"Ah." Tempus barely seemed to have considered the possibility; he looked around at the battlefield as if he was considering it for the first time, and winced just slightly. "The timescale of mortal lives often makes such conflicts seem... irrelevant to me. I went for the greatest display of power I had in my collection. I apologize."

"It's fine." Sev waved it off. "It taught me something valuable about divinity, and whatever's happening here seems... I don't know how long ago this happened."

"Eighteen hundred years," Tempus said.

Before the end of the universe, then. Before the system existed? Sev frowned, looking out over the battlefield again; somehow, the fact that he couldn't see who the enemy if they could be called that here felt... significant.

"You would like something else, then?" Tempus asked.

"I learned what I needed to," Sev said finally. "And I know what is possible, even if this isn't the direction I want to go in. I know that I can be more. I just need to choose my own direction one that isn't this."

"Do you have an idea of what you wish to be?" Tempus' voice was mild, curious. Sev thought about it for a moment, even as the scene around him faded, and he found himself once more kneeling on that prayer mat in the Roads.

Tempus was no longer next to him, but the divine connection between them remained steady and strong perhaps even stronger than before. Part of it almost seemed to be beginning to anchor itself to him the way Aurum's connection was anchored to him.

Yes, Sev answered, this time in his mind. It took a moment of contemplation for the desire to solidify into something certain.

If there was anything that watching that war had taught him if there was any one thing he had to take away from it it was the simple understanding of how he felt about conflict on a scale such as this. He didn't know if it was something he had understood before and lost, with all his memories drained into his healing, but it didn't matter he knew himself now.

I want the power to prevent conflicts like that before they even begin, Sev said. To forge peace where it should be impossible. To search time and pluck out the threads of conflict before they happen.

But in the event that I cannot... and that will happen. Not every conflict can be prevented, and I cannot be useless if I have to fight. Sev's mind briefly went back to the fight with Irvis, and the way he'd been relegated to the role of support; he didn't mind, but he'd been powerless. His shields hadn't done enough, and his true support skills were lacking.

In the event that I cannot, Sev said. I need a better way to heal. A way to fight. And a way to support. A way to take the strengths of those around me and make them even greater.

Tempus hummed in response, and Sev felt the passage of time wrap around him. I may have some suggestions.