NOVEL NEXT Sabbatical – Chapter 206: Lay of the Land
Aperio observed quietly as Damien tinkered with the door to his home for a moment before opening it. As soon as the door had even moved a little, the All-Mother could see various enchantments lighting up, but Damien mumbled some words and they turned off again.
"They seem to work just fine," he said as he looked at Aperio. "Would you mind explaining what you meant when you said that they are out of order?"
"Sure," Aperio replied, a touch of her magic closing the door and pushing Damien outside again.
She stepped up to the door and let some of her mana flow into the lock, causing a click to resound. Aperio carefully pushed it open with a hand instead of the wing she had initially planned to use.
"Do you see what I mean?" the All-Mother asked before she ducked through the now open doorway and entered Damien's home. "And all I did is use some mana to force the lock open. I would have thought that that would be the first thing people would try when they are trying to break in." She tilted her head slightly. "I would have chosen to simply teleport inside, but I do believe that that is outside the realm of possibility for most mortals."
"Here I would agree," Caethya said. "But elsewhere…" She trailed off and looked at the All-Mother. "Well, everyone wishing to be able to defend themselves against anything greater than a few common bandits would know how to do it."
"I can do that," the amalgamation of Earth's God said in a chipper voice, looking a little too happy with itself as it abruptly appeared next to Aperio. "See? Very easy."
The All-Mother shook her head slightly and stepped aside to allow the others entry. Everyone but Ethan filed inside, the Vampire waiting by the door before the milky-eyed man doubled back to invite him in.
Aperio could not help but raise a brow at the interaction. She wanted to ask why that had been needed, but a small shift in Earth's mana answered that question for her. The Vampire had not waited outside because he was polite but because he was unable to enter the house on his own. There was the tiniest difference in the mana inside the home, one the All-Mother had attributed to it being the residence of a mortal.
In the end, all of them are different, and so are their homes, the All-Mother mused, a small smile on her face. Almost like a tiny Dominion they get to claim.
Damien narrowed his eyes slightly as he took in her expression, seemingly not sure what to make of it. Aperio smiled a little wider in reply, and as soon as the door had closed behind Ethan she took the opportunity to finally wrap a wing around Caethya.
The Demigoddess shook her head slightly before she tugged at the feathered limb, causing Aperio to slightly tighten her hold on her love. Everyone but Adam and his godly charge seemed a little surprised at the motion — or perhaps the display of affection — but neither Aperio nor Caethya paid them much mind. What some mortals thought of them ranked fairly low on the scale of importance.
"Is everyone ready to leave, then?" Aperio asked as more of her own mana flowed into some of the mana lines that snaked their way across Earth. "Or do you no longer wish to see its Dominion?"
"Going home already?" the amalgamation asked as it stepped up to a shelf and pulled out one of the books. "Can I not stay? I wish to learn!"
The All-Mother merely offered a shrug, looking to Damien. It was not her home and therefore not her decision to make. "I will only take those who are willing."
"Eleanor?" the milky-eyed man began, turning to face the woman. "Would you be so kind to keep an eye on our guest?
"Sure," the woman replied. "Not too keen on going back there if I am honest. It feels… wrong to be there."
"Because you do not belong," the amalgamation said in the same chipper tone it had used earlier. "Nor were you invited!" It took one of the many books from the shelves, holding it up to its face before it sniffed it. "But no-one can stop her from doing what she wishes to do, so you are welcome in my home." It turned slightly, its eyes settling on Damien. "May I read this book? It smells nice."
"Sure…" the man replied, looking at the amalgamation for a long moment. "Did I understand that correctly? We're not going to your home, but his?"
"I did tell you that it is the amalgamation of all the Gods your kind has dreamed up," Aperio said with a shrug. "Did you think they would not have a place they call their own?" What is it with mortals and doubting?
The man raised his hand, only to lower it a moment later. "Kind of, yeah." He hesitated for a moment, simply looking at the All-Mother. "So what, exactly, does that make you, when it really is what you say it is and you can just ignore whatever it might try?"
Aperio's shoulders slumped, and her head fell forwards as she let out a sigh. Her hair slid forward to partially obscure her face from view. "You know, with how many times you have been told that I am the All-Mother, Creator of everything you know, I would have thought that you understood by now." A thought twisted reality apart, bringing Damien, Caethya and the other two mortals they had just met into the Dominion of Earth's God. "I am exactly what I say I am, and I have been told that you are able to feel that in your Soul."
"So that's what that is," Karla said. "It's not like I know that you are what you claim to be, but I do somehow know that every word you speak is the truth; that every utterance is undeniable fact."
"I don't get the same feeling," Caethya said as Aperio's eyes settled on her. "Never did, actually. I knew you were the All-Mother, but not that your words were the truth." The Demigoddess tapped her chin. "That they think so might be related to their general lack of mana. Your existence is quite magical in and of itself, so it stands to reason that someone with little magic of their own would feel your influence more, even if you keep it in check as much as possible."
The All-Mother only gave an annoyed huff in reply, gesturing towards the mostly empty expanse that was the amalgamation's Dominion. "Explore as much as you wish. We can return whenever you are ready."
The three mortals looked at one another for a moment. When they scurried off, it was towards the only thing of note in the space: the tapestry Aperio had arrived in front of when she had first entered the Dominion herself.
Aperio, for her part, simply formed a sofa made from her mana and displaced herself and Caethya to sit on it. The Demigoddess only raised a brow before leaning back against the feathered limb of her love that still held her in its embrace.
"And?" she asked, making sure to use the language of their people. "What is your verdict on Earth so far?"
"Annoying," Aperio replied, a thought bringing up a mana-based projection of the magical rivers flowing all throughout the planet. "But I did find these and they are quite intriguing."
"Did they make that, or did the world form with them?" Caethya asked, shifting a little in the All-Mother's wing as a book appeared in her hand. "I know people tried to create leylines on Verenier in the past, but the only group that got close were the ones that also built Lightfray.
Even then," she said, and started to leaf through the book, "as far as I know, they never quite succeeded in doing that. Might be best to ask Edisicio or Ferio about it."
"Perhaps we should," Aperio replied, mentally tugging on a few of the leylines — as they were apparently called — and coercing them into a knot of her own making. "But I am fairly certain that these are mortal-made as they feel… artificial. The mana wishes to go elsewhere, but before it can gather the momentum and strength with which it can escape it arrives at another of the knots and is trapped once more.
"I have been testing them over the last little while." A part of her mind observed with amusement as Earth's other leylines adjusted to incorporate her newly-formed knot. "It is impressive considering the level of magic we have seen on display here."
"Will it interfere with the System?"
"No," the All-Mother replied with a slight shake of her head. "If it wanted to, I could simply remove the leylines from the world, but I would like to leave them mostly as is."
"Besides your experimenting, of course," Caethya added for Aperio, smiling at her. "But I would be surprised if anything you did to them couldn't be reversed."
"I do not believe that to be the case. So far, none of the mortals seem to have truly noticed that something is happening to their network." She underlined her words with a thought that tugged at the line running below Riverburg while another thought showed Caethya the entirety of the city so she could judge their reaction. "I am beginning to think that most of them would not even notice the System coming back if I withheld its visual aspects and just had it interact with them through a 'voice'."
"Wouldn't it do that anyway for people who think it's a voice?" Caethya asked, her brows slightly scrunched and the confusion evident in her words. "I see mine as a blue-ish window in most cases, but in the past — before I learned how to read, for example — it was just a voice.
"I also know that a great many people perceive it as a book or scroll of some sort," Caethya continued, placing a thumb on the current page of her book and closing it. "Has it never changed for you?"
"No," Aperio replied, forming a blue window with a silver outline in front of Caethya with her mana. "This is how it has always looked for me. Even when I was a child and could not read, I had no trouble understanding what it said." She tilted her head slightly. "At the time I had thought it simply meant that the System could always be understood by everyone, but now… I am more inclined to believe I was able to comprehend what it said because, in the end, I am the System." To a degree, at least.
"I still don't understand how that dynamic works," her love said with an almost silent sigh. "It's not like you personally oversee everything the System does. I know you, and that seems like something you would not want to do."
The All-Mother dismissed the projection she had made and remained quiet for a moment, her eyes wandering around the Dominion of Earth's God in an effort to find something that could tell her how to put her thoughts into words.
Saying that the System was the subconscious part of her mind that had been given a more clear set of rules to direct her own power was correct, but it also didn’t quite feel right. Probably because the idea of telling your subconscious to do something is a weird idea… Still, if those rules hadn't been in place, Aperio was certain that her creation would look a lot weirder.
An errant thought from her could already cause all manner of things — likely even the destruction of a world, if she let herself go unchecked for a little too long. The idea of a part of herself, one that she did not have direct control over, being allowed to roam free was not something the All-Mother wished to consider at length.
"Think of it as a measure to prevent a thought of revenge from erasing people from existence," Aperio eventually said before she let out a sigh and shook her head slightly. "I am not happy with this explanation, but you can think of it as my subconscious mind, given structure. It is the closest comparison I can think of at the moment, and is also likely the best understanding I currently have of both the System and myself."
"It seems easy enough to understand, even if the concept itself is a little out there." Caethya placed a hand on the small of Aperio's back, the All-Mother shifting the wing around her love slightly to better accommodate the movement. "I can't even begin to think of a way to control your subconscious mind like that, but then, assuming that your mind works like my own is probably wrong."
"Probably," Aperio agreed. "But it is a fair assumption to make. I look like a mortal, and think like one. At least I think I do."
Of course, the ease with which she could use magic and the sheer difference in power between her and literally anyone else caused her to do things a little differently from the norm, but Aperio assumed that was the case for anyone that attained some level of power beyond the common folk.
Her proof for that assumption was her love sitting next to her. Caethya had very much been a mortal before, but she also had never seemed to be stumped by any of the divine shenanigans she had been involved in. But maybe that's just her.
"You are doing an adequate job for a primordial being that is probably older than the universe we find ourselves in," the Demigoddess replied, the book she had been holding onto vanishing before she leaned her full weight against the All-Mother. "What you still need to learn is how to actually take a vacation, however. I would not consider anything that we have done so far to be actually relaxing."
"I can relax once I have properly brought the System back," the All-Mother replied.
"Then perhaps you should get started on that," Caethya said, poking a finger into Aperio's side. "We all deserve some time off."
