NOVEL NEXT Chapter 29: Divine Duty
Tess settled back in her chair, basking in the warmth of the fire and letting out a sigh of relief. Some of the other Appointed had left, leaving just Gramps’s party, Rachel, Amara, and herself. Amara was in a different room talking with Eyfura about Maven, so that left only Rachel and the rest of Gramps’s party.
“So, what’d you think?” Gramps asked.
“Well…” Tess began, thinking that over, “Honestly, were it not for all the important-sounding things everyone was talking about, it kind of seemed more like a bunch of old friends meeting up rather than a bunch of emissaries of the gods having an important gathering.”
Rachel laughed. “That’s sort of the idea. When I proposed this I was hoping to do away with the barrier between us that was being wary of everyone all the time, even if that wariness ended up just being diplomatic politeness. And it worked, too, cooperation between Appointed is higher than it’s ever been before; you would have never seen things like your Grandpa’s party.”
Tess nodded. “So…um, what do we do? I didn’t really get all that dungeon talk during the meeting.”
Rachel motioned at Gramps. “He’s in charge of that. Well, in charge of most things, actually. We’re not technically in any sort of hierarchy, but he’s got the aptitude for leading and the stuff he has from Fate is really useful in planning, so he’s our de-facto leader.”
Gramps smirked. “It’s not as glamorous as all that.” He said, “Really it just means more work for no extra benefits.” He glanced at Tess’s face, continuing on. “No, I can’t tell people to do things, not without good reason. They’re not going to blindly listen to orders just because I’m the planner. The only amount of power I have is the ability to call meetings like this, but any one of them can do it too, so that’s a moot point.
“Anyway, our job is making sure society progresses and everyone gets stronger. We want to make sure everyone has room to grow and flourish, and that duty broadly falls into two categories.”
He raised a finger. “First is domestic. We make sure no empires crop up that completely dominate all planes, keep intelligent races from being wiped out, stop people from taking slaves, keep religious ideologies from getting too radical or exclusionary, and the like. We can’t and don’t stop all of this stuff, nor should we, but we keep the really bad stuff down.
“The dungeons fall into the domestic category,” He continued, “We oversee the growth of new dungeons, allowing them to grow to sizes that are beneficial to people without letting them get strong enough to wipe out all of civilization. Right now, Valin takes care of most of that, as he doesn’t have any other pressing business to attend to and that was something he did as Hunt’s Appointed before we formed our little group. Only real difference is now he calls us up if he starts to struggle.
“Each individual god has unique duties they give to their Appointed as well, and I had Fate get Fortune to make a list of hers during one of her breaks from working with Amy, but we’ll get to those in a second. Our other duty is a bit more…complex.”
He frowned as he got into this next part, “Every few decades we’ll get called out to do battle away from our universe, something we call a Conflict. I’m not totally privy to the details of how it all works, but planes sort of just…pop into existence, and all the Administrators have to figure out who gets them. Of course, not every Administrator gets along, so eventually it devolved into fights over new planes.”
He waved a hand, “We’ll get more into detail on this when it becomes relevant, but the long of the short of it is that Appointed help serve as soldiers in this fight, usually directly alongside the gods. Don’t worry about it too much, there’s this whole code of conduct that generally keeps anything permanent from happening to the participants. We’re actually due for one in a couple of years, but I highly doubt you’ll be directly involved. Usually new Appointed are spectators for their first couple of Conflicts to let them get a feel for how everything works. “
He reached into his pocket, bringing out his phone. “Enough of that for now, though. Let’s look over this list…” He hummed as he tapped away, eventually letting out a small “a-ha!” as he presumably found what he was looking for.
“So, your list for domestic tasks is pretty short for now.” He said, looking up from the phone, “And Fortune’s said that she’s not going to expect you to do too much until you’re out of training, though if something becomes enough of a problem, she might have you deal with it.
“Your first duty is to punish those who are misusing her name. That one’s pretty standard, you basically just deal with people falsely claiming they’re acting under her instruction or saying she said things she didn’t, stuff like that. Any questions so far?”
Tess shook her head, so he continued. “The next thing is…” He looked down at the phone, “Ah. Once you’re out of training, you’re going to reveal yourself to the leadership of the Church of Fortune. You’re to be the intermediary between her and them. Basically, any big announcements or changes will be run by you first. If you determine the change to be something worth running by Fortune, you do. Otherwise, you use your own judgement to answer.”
“Wait, doesn’t that basically…put me in charge?”
Rachel snickered. “Yes. You’re the most direct link to Fortune out there, so it makes sense to put you in charge of her church. Or, at the least, you’re her mouthpiece to the church. The public’s not going to know anything about you other than that you exist, you’re basically additional confirmation to people that the church is the real deal. Their structure or mode of operation doesn’t really change much…” She trailed, off, looking at Gramps.
Gramps nodded. “That was next on the list. Her church needs an audit. She hasn’t had a good way to go through it and root out all the unscrupulous people, not without getting much more hands-on than is really prudent for a god. She left it to me the last couple of times it became really necessary, but now that you’re here she wants you to handle it. Hopefully your existence alone will make that task far easier than it might be otherwise.”
Tess sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to study the church, then. I’ll ask Alice or Eyfura about it some time.”
“Good.” Gramps gave her an encouraging smile. “Lastly, you’re going to have to do some reforms with gambling society. That’s a big ask, but it’s not supposed to be immediate. She wants you to help make gambling a little less…unsavory than it is now, start standardizing practices and making sure at least the biggest parlors and casinos don’t cheat their patrons.
“She doesn’t expect you to root out every predatory establishment out or anything, she just wants you to help make sure there are trustworthy places available for people to use. Hopefully, that should drive some of the really bad places out of business.” He put his phone back into his pocket. “That’s it for now, you might get more later, or some of these duties might be removed. It all depends on how things shake out, this is a first for Fortune so she’s not quite sure what she wants or needs. Any last questions before we continue?”
Tess blinked. “Is the gambling culture as…shady as it is on Mael?”
Gramps shook his head. “Worse. The Luck stat leads to a lot of sketchy odds and scams. Unfortunately, a lot of the worst offenders are high level as well, but that shouldn’t be an issue by the time you’re actually dealing with this.”
“I’ll show you around a casino sometime.” Ava added. “I’ve got some ways of looking nondescript, so people won’t be able to recognize us or anything.”
Tess grimaced. “Great. I’m sure that’s going to be a blast.”
“Welcome to being an Appointed,” Atum snorted. “It’s dirty work, but important. You’ll be making a lot of people’s lives better, so just keep that in mind, I find it helps with some of the harder stuff.”
“Alright, I will.” Tess replied, looking back to Gramps. “There’s more? You said you were going to continue.”
“Not duties or anything, just things you should know.” Gramps replied. “Now that you’re an Appointed, you don’t follow the same set of rules that everything else does. Your body and soul have a much higher concentration of Worship going through them than that of normal people, and because of that, there are a few things you have to be careful with.
“The first is revival after death. Normal revival methods just aren’t strong enough to bring an Appointed back, there has to be Worship involved somehow. If you want revival on the spot, it needs to be through a Blessing or Phantasmal Skill. Otherwise, Fortune’s responsible for bringing you back. And, since she’s not one of the gods that normally deals with revivals, that’s going to mean those revivals will be inconvenient.
“From what I understand, she doesn’t really know how to do repairs, so she’s going to do the equivalent of copy-pasting your body from a backup. If her bond is anything like Fate’s, that backup is made roughly once a week, though she can do it manually. Unfortunately, that backup takes a few days to make, and she can only really put it in places with strong ties to her such as her church, or even some of the bigger casinos.
“But that backup doesn’t include any of your stuff, including clothes. Fortunately, anything to do with Monster Breeder should be fine, since the cores you’ve absorbed are in your soul, not your body. So…don’t die, it’s really not good for anyone involved.”
“If you’re near the city, have one of your companions bring your body to me.” Rachel said, “I’ve got a revive that works on Appointed. Only works within twenty-four hours from when you originally died, though, so after that it’s up to Fortune.”
“Right.” Gramps said, “And that higher concentration of Worship that keeps you from being revived is something that, if you’re not careful, can be identified. People have figured out ways to detect Worship, well…they call it divine power or divine energy, but it’s Worship. Anyway, some advanced magic detectors can figure out if you’re an Appointed.
“If you aren’t careful, that is. Your body has safeguards in place to prevent people detecting the Worship in it, so you really only need to worry about it when you’re using Stamina or Mana. So, for the rest of the day, I’m going to be teaching you how to control yourself so that you don’t leak Worship when you use this stuff. And you won’t be able to slack on it, either, Eyfura will stay on your case about it while you’re training. It needs to become second nature to do these things, or you could find yourself targeted by some…less than savory people.”
Tess gulped, giving a nod. “So…what do I need to do?”
Gramps frowned. “That’s the hard part. There’s no easy way to describe that, it’s like moving a limb. So, I’m going to have to do it for you. Usually this is the job of the Appointed’s god, but since you’re in a bit of a unique situation and can’t go into Descent, we can’t really do that. So, as long as you’re fine with it, I’m going to essentially mind-control you with a spell, activate a Skill for you while doing the broad strokes of this…holding back thing, and we’ll repeat that until you can start doing it by yourself.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Tess agreed. “Let me know when you want to start, I guess.”
“We’ll need to get the table in the meeting hall taken down.” Gramps replied. “That room’s the only one big enough for this kind of stuff. Do you mind fetching Eyfura so she and Atum can get that taken care of?”
“Sure.” Tess replied, standing up and stretching a little.
“Thanks a bunch. The rest of us will take down the chairs while you do.”
Tess made her way over to the room where Eyfura and Amara were talking.
“And school on Mael ends when?” Amara asked.
“A few months from now, sometime around the beginning of summer, I think.” Eyfura said. “I’m not completely sure myself, but that’s what I’ve been told. Can you have her parents convinced by then?”
Amara smirked. “It’s just a matter of framing it right. It’ll take a couple of months of working at this, tops. Worst comes to worst I just play the card that is “the Appointed of Fate thinks it’s a good idea” and they’ll fall in line. Hopefully it won’t come to that, because there’ll be no end to their grumbling, but I doubt they’ll be that stubborn.”
She glanced over at the door, smiling at Tess. “We were just finalizing plans to have Maven join your party. Do you need something?”
“Um, yeah,” Tess said, “Gramps wanted Eyfura to help Atum take down the table, he’s going to teach me how to prevent the Worship in me leaking and needs the space.”
Eyfura nodded, standing up. “Sure thing. We’ll finish talking about this after I do that, is that OK, Amara?”
“Sure, I was getting a little hungry anyway.” Amara hopped off of the bed she was on, making her way over to a door. “I’m going to grab a snack, I’ll meet you guys in the hall once I’m done eating.”
Tess followed Eyfura into the hall, where most of the chairs surrounding the table were already in the process of being dealt with. A few were moved to the side, but most were being folded up and taken away.
Getting the hall clear only took a few minutes, most of which was just waiting as Eyfura and Atum disassembled and then carried the table back to where it had been stored before. Soon most everyone had taken a seat, leaving Gramps and Tess standing in the center of the room.
“So, uh…is everyone just going to watch me or…?” Tess asked, glancing at the assembled Appointed.
Rachel laughed. “For a little bit. I want to get a taste of what you can do, I’m rather curious.”
“I’ll have her demonstrate once Amara gets here,” Gramps said. “But until then, we’re just going to do a bit of practice. Now, Tess, this is going to feel weird, but I need you to bear with me while we do this. Just say the word and I’ll start, alright?”
“Go ahead.” As soon as she said it, Gramps raised his hand, a magic circle appearing around him as he cast a spell. There was an odd, slippery sort of sensation, and her body stopped listening to her, becoming rigid as foreign control as influenced.
Her hand raised itself, and then faltered, control of her body returning. “Uh…” Gramps said, scratching the back of his neck embarrassedly, “Could you extend your claws for me? I’m afraid I don’t know how to do that. I tried, but it didn’t feel like using other Skills so I’m not sure where to start.”
Tess nodded, extending her claws. “Does it matter?”
“Probably not, but Phantasmal Skills have been known to have some odd interactions with this technique. I want you to get used to doing this with them out because you’ll generally have them out when you’re using this anyway. We’ll try it without the claws later just to make sure it’s the same. Mind if I resume the control?”
With a nod from Tess, Gramps recast the spell, and Tess once again lost control of herself. There was a slight pause, and then a Skill activated, one of her cheaper ones, from what she could tell. There was a strange sense of…hesitance about it, almost like she hadn’t fully committed to using the Skill, but it had activated anyway.
Well, not really like that, but she couldn’t describe it better. A training dummy similar to the one Gramps had made to have her show off to Valin appeared in front of her, and Gramps slashed Tess’s claws out, letting the Skill do its work on the dummy. He repeated the process of using the Skill a few times, then dropped the spell. “Alright, you give it a go now.”
Tess activated the Skill, trying to emulate that odd hesitance that had been there when Gramps was doing it. It took her a few tries, but eventually she hit on…something. It wasn’t quite as…complete as what Gramps had done, but she could tell if she played around with it a little, she would eventually get there.
“Good.” Gramps said, “Keep trying there. You’ll get there soon.”
And so, she spent the morning and most of the early afternoon in practice. Once Amara had finished with her snack she came in and Tess gave her and Rachel a similar demonstration to the one she had given Valin, and after that the rest of the Appointed filtered out over the course of a couple of hours.
In the end, just her, Gramps, and Eyfura remained the whole time. Finally, Tess reached a point where she was able to hold back the Worship without failing even once over the course of thirty Skills.
“We’ll call that good for now.” Gramps said. “I have a couple more things to teach you, like the magic needed to teleport here, and then I think I’ll send you home for the day. Sound good?”
Tess yawned. “Sounds perfect. I need a nap.”
She said her goodbyes to Eyfura and headed home with Gramps. She changed into some pajamas and collapsed into bed, the exhaustion of getting up early finally catching up to her.
