135 Subdomain On Display (2/2)
”It might be easier if you just help me out. Locally... rewind time or something!” I grumbled, asking for some aid from a greater domain. I heard an almost robotic chuckle in the back of my mind. After hearing that I could have sworn it began to be a bit easier for me to do this. But it's well within the realm of possibility that I was inadvertently wanting something to be true rather than actually seeing a pattern.
Eventually though, I began to feel it. I began to feel myself inch towards success.
”That's it...” I muttered, smiling as I spoke. The smile on my face would have likely unsettled anyone who saw it, had they been members of the living. My only company at the moment were the undead.
All over the fallen villages, bodies sprang into being. They were not alive, instead they were the exact corpses of the fallen. It took several minutes, as even for a god this was an unusual act, but when it began to happen I cheered internally. As it happened, I heard an annoyed sigh.
”Oh come on! Did you manage to do it, successfully, even without my help? Darn it!” A voice grumbled in my mind.
”I can't believe you succeeded! And after I even turned off the power that let you use singular scraps of flesh and bone to make bodies whole...” Complained the subdomain of necromancy. It sounded annoyed. I chuckled at its expense. That did explain why doing this felt harder than when I had done it in the past. I had done this before, and it shouldn't have felt like this much effort.
”You're only encouraging me to diversify the powers and domains I make use of.” I told the annoyed subdomain. I didn't even know why it was annoyed in the first place. Pragmatically what I had just done should have made it overjoyed, I had slaughtered the living and was hells-bent on reanimating them to serve me.
”Why are you even annoyed?” I asked the subdomain. I heard a surprisingly cat-like hiss in my head as a response and it was followed by silence. It took the subdomain nearly a full two minutes to formulate an answer.
”Because so far you've only used undead creatures in relation to life! You fought living slavers with the undead, and now you're fighting mortals as an evil god, which is an improvement, but you've put them in the hands of abominations!” The subdomain told me, which made a certain kind of sense. That said, I still sighed in response.
”I want you to use undead to create more undead! Not to help the living jockey for power!” The subdomain snapped. I could feel its irritation growing.
”If you just used me... You could build cults that don't need food, or to breathe... They could worship you for all eternity as their creator and lord. And yet you restrain them. And use them solely in relation to the living.” The subdomain told me. There was a sudden tonal shift that caught me off guard.
”You have undead worshipers. You care for and perform miracles for the living, but what about the undead? Do they not deserve a god worth worshipping?” The subdomain asked, rather pointedly.
I mulled over this for a few moments. It was a revealing statement. The subdomain of necromancy wasn't as interested in universal unlife as I thought, or at least it was more interested in multiple things and not purely an entity of unmaking. That said, this remark wasn't entirely fair.
”I understand your perspective, but I don't feel that you're being entirely fair here. I have awoken once nearly mindless undead. I have fulfilled your quests. I have made undead out of creatures I've killed, and also reanimated corpses that were long dead. Your anger isn't fair. At least not fully.” I told the subdomain, defending myself and pointing out that at least some of what it felt wasn't accurate.
”I am pursuing power. I am finally inching towards building faiths around myself. And that's an admittedly imperfect process so far, but I am still doing it. It takes time! What makes you think I don't care about the undead?” I asked, curious and also still shocked by the fact that a subdomain apparently just shut off access to a power of mine. I hadn't known they could do that.
”You don't destroy for destruction's sake! You don't kill to create more undead. You do it for reasons. Real ones!” The subdomain told me, shocking me with the absurdity of its response. I was mulling over that response when my thoughts were interrupted by the intrusion of another voice.
”Althos, you're overthinking this. The necromancy subdomain is a chaotic one. Its reasoning is... poor, at best. It is a creature of raw power and destruction. It seeks to overwhelm universes and commit omnicide for the sake of filling entire universes with undead monsters. Don't try to apply logic to it.” Muttered the voice. It was a voice I was familiar with, as it belonged to the domain of knowledge.
Listening to that helped center my thoughts, but it didn't make me feel better. I groaned in annoyance.
”Since you managed to succeed... I suppose I'll turn your power back on. But the next quest I devise is going to be far grander in scale!” The necromantic subdomain told me, founding more like an angry child than an embodiment of an entire school of magic. There was something mildly amusing about that though.
That was when I received an interesting notification. One that took a second to truly catch my eye. It was a prayer, from a figure with a familiar name.
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[Lord Althos... I come to you in search of a purpose. In search of a destiny. I am approaching you, on my hands and knees, metaphorically speaking, because I seek... I seek a master.
My name is Ava and I am a 'freed' slave from the city of Aronms. When you commanded the Ardor family to liberate their slaves, I was one of the ones who resisted. But I and others like me were defeated. And the Ardors refused to let us stay with them. We suspect they feared to anger you.
I have spent these last few days in search of a purpose. In search of a master to serve. And, because of your emphasis on personal freedoms, those I've approached have rejected me. So now, I'm plainly approaching you.
I am freely choosing to approach you and ask for a purpose. I know not the intricate ways of prayer, or even how to ask for a master, but that's ultimately what I seek. Would you please allow me to serve you?
If so, please tell me how I am to serve. I care not what role you put me in, solely that you decide my destiny. Which in a way you did. I am now asking you to reconsider in my case, and to consider how to give purpose to the others like me, who didn't want to be freed.
Do we not have the freedom to decide to serve, of our own volition? If we do, just know this: I decide to serve you. I only seek direction in how you'd like me to do that.]
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”Ava? Aoife's sister... How intriguing.” I muttered, a sadistic smile on my face as a mortal asked me to ”decide her destiny”.
I of course knew of her already. I knew that she and a few others had wanted to continue to serve the dark elves. That they were an odd camp wanted to be with their slave-owners, and that they had been thoroughly broken by those who called them their ”masters”.
I also knew that their hearts were still filled with a longing to have some sort of purpose, which they felt I had taken from them. It was an odd condition. But Ava was the first of her kind to approach me so boldly. So I wanted to ”reward” her. And I could picture a few ways to do so.