Chapter 5-145: What About Heaven? (1/2)

“I have some questions for you,” Topaz said to me, her rough accent dropping smoothly away, and the more urbane, cultured tones of an educated person replacing them.

“Go ahead.” I was in cover and virtually invisible, moving nothing but my eyes as I looked for signs of motion... or the pulled threads of magic. I might see something before she felt Pacts operating nearby, maybe.

“You obviously know a great deal more than your appearance would seem to indicate. I admit to never seeing someone using pure Wizardry as effectively as you do.”

I inclined my head just a fraction. “We all have our specialties.”

“Yes.” She looked up at the sky above, which was rapidly closing as the vivus on the ground was eaten away, neutralized, and dispersed by the concentrated power of millions of undead nearby. “Did you see the sky?”

I frowned, and sighed. “I did.”

“I know all the stars in the sky, all the constellations. I know the entities that are bound to every planet, star, and moon, I can feel them staring at me from the sky...”

“And those weren’t the entities you were seeing... or at least, they weren’t in the right places.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m not even sure that was the moon...”

“It wasn’t.”

She closed her eyes, quietly cursing under her breath. “I was hoping very much I was wrong.”

“So was I,” I admitted.

“What has happened?” she asked, staring at me, as if I had the answers.

“I can’t verify it, because the Shroud’s severing us from the dimensions means interdimensional location spells are totally wonky, as they can’t sense where what is relative to what. But I believe the combination of the Shroud coming and possibly the Curse of the Sun bringing magic back forced us out of our original universe, into one that could tolerate and support this level of magic.

“It could also be an active side effect of the Shroud. A low magic universe can’t support the power of the Shroud for long. So quietly moving the planet to a realm where there’s enough magic to keep it around may be a side effect of coming to an out-of-the-way planet like ours.”

She stared at me calmly. “You talk like an experienced planar traveler,” she noticed.

“You speak like someone who has had dealings with extraplanars,” I replied evenly.

“I have,” she admitted, shrugging. “When you’ve as many Pacts with as many entities as I have, information is more valuable than gold, and the things that have it, know it.”

“Agreed. But the Earth isn’t in our solar system anymore. It could be literally anywhere, and we don’t know what’s actually outside the planet right now. How bad was it for you?”

She looked up at the hole that was almost gone, shutting away the faint blue of the day beyond, hiding it behind dark grey whorls of chained souls and intermittent, angry hate lightning.

“Pretty bad. There’s things out there... some were looking, some were not, but none of them had any plans to come down. The Shroud has a very powerful dissuasion effect on them...”

“They didn’t want to become undead slaves to an entity that could slaughter a world.” I could only grimace. “The implications for when we get rid of the last Dark Clergy are pretty ominous. If the people can’t handle it... it’s going to be bad.”

“So... you have to make the world tough enough to handle it.”

“Pretty much.”

She looked out over the wasted landscape of abandoned, crumbling buildings, crumbled and necrotized plant life, and pondered the implications.

I was pretty sure she had all the mental Stats at base 23, just Consuming other people and taking their brains for her own. Add on how old she was, and other bonuses from Class Levels taken or stolen, and she was probably close to rivaling me in one form or another.

It made her exceedingly dangerous, but it didn’t mean she had the information resources I had.

“How conversant are you with Heavenly laws?” she asked me at last.

“For what purpose? I don’t propose to understand Good... it’s a foundational power of the multiverse. That’s like asking a bacteria to understand you.”

She clenched her fist. “Is it capable of breaking a Hell Pact?” she asked more precisely.

“Technically, yes. Realistically, no. All the Profound Alignments can break Pacts... it’s just energy expenditure, and they are beyond limitless. But if they break a Pact, tit for tat comes in, if not complete collapse of the Pact system.

“Now, they could negotiate with Hell to withdraw the Pact, but that means a price has to be paid, and if there’s one thing Hell is good at, it’s drawing every drop of blood they can for something.

“At this point, you’re dragging in I don’t know how many souls, innocent and guilty, to Hell with you. Your value is very high, and the fact that you still didn’t get away in the end is at least as valuable as you getting away in the end, and that only from a propaganda standpoint.

“In short, your price is high, and someone would have to be willing to pay it. Hell is totally aware of it, too.”

She frowned unhappily. “There’s definitely no way Heaven is going to pay that price for me...”

“Probably not,” I agreed, given what she was and what she did. “The price you’d have to pay to be worthy of that sacrifice is probably not something you want to pay, either.”

She grimaced despite herself. “No, you’re probably right on that. Is there any other way?”