NOVEL NEXT Chapter 42: Secrets
“If I tell you, will you promise to help me?” Selessa asked slowly, turning back to face him full.
“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to walk out of here, consequences be-damned,” Dominic countered, his eyes narrowing. “I told you – I don’t like secrets which could come and bite me later.”
The goddess growled softly.
“Then you must at least swear secrecy if you decide not to help me after this,” she bargained. Dominic considered it, then nodded slowly.
“As long as keeping the secret will not threaten my life or livelihood nor those of my Pride,” he added. Selessa looked unhappy, but eventually sighed, her whiskers twitching.
“Very well. Do you swear to keep what I am about to tell secret from all, unless the keeping of it threatens your life or the lives of those in your care?” she asked with an air of heavy authority.
Dominic was about to swear when a thought suddenly occurred to him.
“I share a mind with another being. I won’t be able to keep it secret from him,” he warned. Nor would he want to – he’d never liked it when people kept secrets from him, or didn’t tell him information that could badly affect him badly and he wouldn’t want to inflict that on Leo. He’d had a few blow-ups with his friends over the issue; had even lost one over a secret kept. His dad thought it was because of what his mother had done, but Dominic thought it was just natural not to like other people keeping secrets – important ones, anyway.
Selessa looked abruptly startled, the air of authority vanishing temporarily.
“Another being…and one not considered sapient by the System, or he would be here,” she mused. Her eyes narrowed. “That would be an interesting story, I am sure, but we have no time for it. Are you able to guarantee his silence?”
Dominic hesitated again.
“I can encourage him to stay silent,” he replied slowly, “but I cannot guarantee it.”
Selessa growled, the sound more irritable than frustrated.
“I must tell you for you to agree to swear yourself to me, yet if you let this secret lose, I will lose everything.”
“What if I swear to keep it secret from anyone who I feel does not need to know?” suggested Dominic. Selessa eyed him with an exasperated look to her red gaze.
“That is no better than simply asking you to keep it secret – and trusting you to do so.”
“Then why not do that?” challenged Dominic. “If you can convince me that the secret is worth keeping, then I will – apart from with Leo.”
Selessa seemed to consider it, but then let out a frustrated sigh.
“Fine. It seems I must trust you to have any possible future at all. Do you swear to keep what I am about to tell secret from all, unless the keeping of it threatens your life or the lives of those in your care – or you feel that it is necessary to reveal it?”
“I do,” the human agreed. Abruptly, it felt like there was a band wrapped around his chest. He gasped as it grew tighter and tighter, feeling like it would crush his ribs any moment. And then the pressure disappeared as if it had never been there. “What was that?” he demanded.
“You have made an oath to me, human. If you risk breaking it, you will be warned. If you continue pushing, it will limit how many Prey Points you can earn from kills for as much and as long as the System considers necessary according to how badly it was broken.”
“You could have warned me that would happen!” Dominic exclaimed angrily. The goddess seemed unbothered by his anger.
“Were you intending on breaking your word?” she asked with insouciance.
“No!”
“Then it matters not. Do not try to forswear yourself and nothing will happen. Besides, it is already an oath which is so loose in its terms that it was almost not worth swearing at all,” she reminded him.
Dominic still couldn’t help fuming a bit at the lack of warning. Still, there was nothing he could do for now except to be more careful of the fine-print when making agreements with deities.
“Are you going to tell me whatever it is now, then?” he asked, more rudely than Selessa liked if the narrowing of her own eyes and the lifting of her lips were anything to go by. A moment of tension filled the air and Dominic almost regretted how he’d phrased that – whatever else she might be, it was true that Selessa was far more powerful than he was. Even if she couldn’t hurt him in this space, there was no guarantee that she couldn’t hurt him full stop. But perhaps her obvious desperation for him would make her overlook his tone anyway.
As it turned out, that seemed to be the case as the feline goddess just took a deep breath before speaking again.
“I was once far more powerful than I am now. Goddess of the Hunt on many planets, part of a Pride full of deities as powerful as I was, all enlightened beasts originally. Our leader was beyond all of us, one of the strongest deities in the multiverse. We competed with the greatest groups of enlightened beasts, and the religious organisations of the sapient races.
“Then…everything fell apart. There was not only one cause, though the disappearance of our leader didn’t help. Infighting, betrayal, laziness…. Our enemies didn’t hesitate to take advantage of our weakness. We were picked off one by one. Those of us who stayed loyal, that is: some of those betrayals came at the claws of those who saw the winds changing and sought favour with the strongest groups of our enemies. My sister….” She cut herself off as if feeling she’d said too much. When she resumed speaking, it was as if she’d said nothing.
“I was not aware of everything that had happened when they came for me – I preferred my wilderness and my wild places over the politicking of the Pride. Yet that did not save me. I was hunted. I, and my followers with me.
“Whittled down to a bare clawful of my most loyal, my most powerful, I was trapped in the circle of my enemies. There, my most powerful magic-user conceived of a plan. A deity cannot be killed while any of her followers still lives. And so he cast an enchantment, a master-piece. It rendered all those followers around him immortal, unbreakable, unkillable.”
She paused, her words trailing off. Dominic couldn’t help wanting to know more, his interest thoroughly captured. The image she painted of a goddess and her few remaining followers desperate to do anything to survive…it made him feel sympathy for her despite himself.
“However, such magic has a price. He knew of one part of the price and all of them were willing to pay it – even fiercely proud. To be so invulnerable to both time and others meant that they had to be equally impotent. They were cast into an enchanted sleep, unable to note the passing of time, or intervene in any events.
“The other price…none of us realised what it was. We thought that his magic would only impact those it was cast upon; what we did not realise was that because my existence was so wound up in theirs, it would demand a price from me too. The whole purpose of casting the spell was to render me unkillable – it should not have been a surprise that this would come at a cost to me, but it was.
“In seconds, the vast majority of my power was ripped from me and woven into the spell. From a powerful goddess of a powerful Pride, I became one of the weakest, weaker even than a newly birthed deity.
“Worse, the sudden influx of a huge amount of divine power twisted the enchantment my warlock cast. Instead of him being able to release the enchantment at a signal from me, or have it wear off over time, it has become self-sustaining and outside of his control. Even slumbering, he should have had the ability to release it in his lucid dreams, but he does not. Or so I can only assume considering the eons which have passed since.
“I was taken by my enemies. They couldn’t kill my followers, and unable to do that they couldn’t kill me. But they could lock us away, prevent me from ever being able to find a way to reverse the enchantment on my remaining loyalists. And so I have been mouldering away for eons.”
The goddess had been gazing steadily at Dominic for the whole of her story, but now she turned and gazed up at the sky. The human’s eyes flicked over her. It seemed an incredible story, and he had no way of knowing whether she was telling the truth or not. But just then, as she gazed up at the heavens, he felt that she looked as old as she had indicated she really was.
Not because of grey fur or lost teeth – who knew how her alien species even reacted to old age? It was in her eyes, in their haunted, tired gaze. He wondered abruptly whether she regretted the fact that she wasn’t able to die – if what she’d said was true, it sounded like she didn’t find much joy in living.
“So you’re not two hundred years old as you indicated when we last met?” he asked a little wryly. Those tired eyes came to rest on the human and he almost buckled under the weight he saw in them, in the fatigued power which bore down on his shoulders.
“No,” she answered dryly.
“Or a new deity?”
“No, though I’d be better off if I were.”
Dominic nodded absently. Something was bothering him.
“If you’re trapped so inescapably that you haven’t been able to get out in ‘eons’, how come you’re here? Or are you able to casually drop into various Places of Power despite your imprisonment?”
“No, I’m not,” she said immediately, then sighed, eyeing him. She hesitated, perhaps wondering whether to tell him something. Dominic decided to stay quiet for the time being and was rewarded when she continued speaking. “That’s why this is such a secret – and why I would really like you to follow me. No. Why I really need you to follow me.”
Dominic waited in anticipation. Everything was telling him that she was being completely honest at this point. He was sure that an ancient goddess would be able to pull a fast one on him if she really tried, but all he could do was rely on what his instincts were saying until they were proven to be wrong. And the fact that so far his instincts had been excellent in spotting when things didn’t add up.
“It goes back to how Places of Power work. When the System engulfs another planet, or planets like in your case, it creates a number of Places of Power. These are ‘artificial’ areas of power – other ‘natural’ ones develop later, but are usually significantly less powerful and are irrelevant to our discussion right now. The ‘artificial’ Places are all sponsored by a deity. We dedicate a little of our power to it, and in return, we gain certain benefits, such as being able to contact the being who has control of it,” here she looked meaningfully at Dominic, “and power feedback as the Place of Power is developed and improved.
“Half the ‘artificial’ Places of Power are…sold, I suppose you could say. It’s a little more complicated than that, but interested parties can claim multiple Places of Power. There is a balance – one party cannot claim more than a certain percentage of Places – but in reality, it often ends up rather unbalanced. The other half are a sort of…lottery.
“As deities, we have a different relationship with the System than mortals. Part of it is that we often dedicate portions of our power to the System itself. As a sort of reward, the System makes sure that all deities have a chance of being given a single Place of Power on a newly-integrated world. It just so happens that this is the first integration I have been awarded one of these lottery places since my imprisonment.”
Selessa got a fierce look on her feline face which almost made Dominic take a step back: his own lionesses’ protective faces looked like a kitten’s attempt to be fierce in comparison.
“Unfortunately for my captors, as stringent as their security measures are, they cannot defend against the very System which gave them their power. For the first time in far too long, I have escaped their prison, if only into this dream world.”
There was a savage delight in her voice which sounded all too real. It was the eagle’s scream as it saw the sky after being caged; the wolf’s howl as it smelt the forest for the first time since it was a pup. Dominic was almost certain she wasn’t lying. What he didn’t know, though, was why she needed him. He voiced just that.
“I hope you’re not hoping that I’m able to take on whatever powerful deities have you captive,” he added to his question doubtfully. “We’re getting more powerful, sure, but I’m certain that they’d be able to destroy us with a flick of their fingers or claws or whatever.”
“With less than that,” Selessa agreed bluntly. “No, the point is that, as I’ve said before, followers give me power. This is the first opportunity I’ve had since I was captured to gain more followers, and start to replace some of the power I lost all that time ago. With enough power, I can get myself out – and then take my revenge on those who have held me so long.”
Dominic shuddered at the sheer bloodthirsty promise in her voice. He didn’t blame her – not if she was being honest about what had happened. Though that was a thought – he was willing to help someone who had been unjustly imprisoned, but what if she was lying about why she’d been captured in the first place? She made it sound like she was innocent in all of it, but what if she’d been…a mass-murderer or something?
“You have doubts?” Selessa asked.
The human hesitated, but then decided it was better to be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb and went ahead.
“Why did they attack you? How do I know you weren’t a…mass-murderer or something?” he asked bluntly. The feline goddess responded with a sharp, snarling laugh.
“All deities are mass-murderers,” she said directly. “To reach Tier six is to swim in an ocean of blood. For enlightened beasts, at least,” she said in addition. “There is the odd sapient race deity who walks the path of crafting and manages to keep their hands mostly clean. But even among the crafters competition is fierce and often deadly, especially at higher levels. Competition among the gods is no more. Why did they want to attack me? Because they wanted what I had. And they didn’t want me to have it.
“You asked me what use I had for you,” she continued. “It is twofold. First, to grow your Pride and encourage them to dedicate themselves to me too. Second, to increase the level of this Place of Power and the territory that it draws from. In return, I will give you the boons that I am capable of now, and my favour when I escape my prison. So, what say you? Will you now swear yourself to me?”
