Chapter 148

Author's Note: This is the final chapter in book 2.

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Zixin appeared in the nothingness that surrounded her brother’s domain. She could have manifested herself right in front of him, of course, but that would be rude. There were niceties to abide by. Sometimes, observing those customs was the only thing that kept the Pantheon from fracturing.

For a minute, she thought that Hestoc would ignore her. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t noticed her presence, not after she’d seen him watching her, but he could decline to invite her in. If he knew what was good for him, he would remember his manners. It would not be the first time she’d had to discipline her younger siblings, and with all the endless eons left to them, it surely wouldn’t be the last.

The doorway opened, and Zixin willed herself through it to find Hestoc glowering down at the world of Aros. “What do you want?” he said without looking at her.

“The God Machine flagged an error for administrative review,” she said.

Hestoc started swearing. “That fucking tattletale. Of course it did. Piece of shit system never did work right.”

“You’ve been meddling,” Zixin said, her voice turning cold as the grave.

“Well it didn’t leave me much choice, did it! Somehow it got a cell off-planet and found the progenitor’s bloodline. What was I supposed to do, let the key walk himself up to the prison and unleash the end of the universe?”

“You were supposed to alert the rest of us. The Pantheon moves as one regarding all matters on Aros. It always has. The prison must be maintained at all costs.”

“There wasn’t time. If I got the humans there fast enough, they could have removed the threat, just like they did with that girl a few hundred years ago.”

“Mmhmm.” Zixin peered down at the world’s past and watched a squad of templars slaughter the elementals that guarded the exit out of the valley that housed the doorway. They’d done nothing but make it easier for the boy to escape. “How’s that worked out for you so far?”

“If you’ve come to mock me, you might as well leave. I’m handling this. Don’t worry about it,” Hestoc said shortly.

“By cutting off a piece of yourself and keeping that servant of yours alive well past when he should have flowed to my domain? By making the prisoner stronger when you left that shard of your divinity behind after the vessel died?”

Hestoc spun to confront her, but Zixin talked right over him. “No, little brother, you aren’t handling things. You’ve bungled this spectacularly. In a matter of months, you’ve managed to let the key walk himself halfway around the world, grow in strength until he can handle all but the most dire of threats, and worst of all, permanently weakened yourself. This is pretty far away from handled.”

“Barely a fingernail’s worth!” Hestoc protested. “It’s hardly permanent. It’s a few centuries to regrow, at most.”

“And we’re all still regrowing the power we invested in the God Machine twelve thousand years ago!” Zixin roared. “This isn’t just your project! It involves all of us. You broke protocol trying to cover your fuck up, and now it’s going to cost us all to fix it, you most of all.”

Hestoc gave her a pained look, but he nodded. “You’re going to…”

“Yes,” she said shortly. “We don’t have much other choice, do we? Maybe three months ago, there were other options, but at this point, the key has meddled with the system far too much. Did you see some of those skills he has available now?”

“Yes,” Hestoc said. “The ones previous keys designed. That level resetting one is a problem. At least the system does a piss-poor job of designing skills on its own. Its inflated the AP cost on all of those bloodline skills significantly. That’s slowing him down.”

“For now,” Zixin said.

“It does give us more time to work.”

Hestoc’s bluster was gone now. He had to have known just how badly he’d messed up as soon as Zixin appeared just outside his domain. She’d decide his punishment later, once the current crisis was averted. As much as she hated to do it, she had to open the portal and bring in something else from off-world. It would make an immeasurable amount of work for her with all the collateral damage, but it was necessary.

She’d wait until she was done cleaning everything up to assign Hestoc his punishment. That way he could sweat about it for a while and she’d come down on him when she was in her most foul mood over the whole thing. Otherwise she’d be too soft-hearted and he wouldn’t learn anything.

“Did you see this new skill the system developed?” Hestoc said, pointing towards the net of their merged divinity that governed how the prisoner’s cells would be contained on Aros. “Look, here.”

“Yes, I saw. [XP Cycle]. What about it?”

“It might be a worthwhile addition to add permanently. I’m still working on the logistics of it, but—”

“Absolutely not,” Zixin said. “The system would break trying to handle the load if every living creature on Aros was constantly cycling XP through the God Machine instead of just at death.”

“Perhaps if we were to reinforce it though.”

“What? Spend more of our essence? Give the machine an even bigger chunk of divinity to play with? Why would we do that?”

Sometimes that boy could be so stupid. He was an idealistic fool, always wanted to muck around with the mortals living on the planet, as if they mattered in the slightest. Their purpose was to shift the prisoner’s cells around, to keep it from reforming the hive. That was it. They were doing that just fine. What did it matter if they killed themselves off before the end of their natural lives, so long as they fulfilled their purpose?

“I just thought, if people lived longer, there might be more of them. They’d be better prepared to handle stronger threats, and the more of them there are, the more the prisoner gets divided up.”

“True, but unnecessary. The God Machine is functioning perfectly fine as it is. There are more than enough redundancies built into it, and it has plenty of ways to alert the Pantheon well before anything gets out of balance enough to give the prisoner the opportunity to escape.”

At least, it did as long as the key didn’t walk right up to the physical manifestation of the machine and let the prisoner out.

Hestoc wasn’t happy, but then again, he never looked happy when she denied one of his asinine requests. The system was his pet project, his last-ditch idea to save the last six remaining gods from assimilation into the hive. No one else cared about the God Machine, as long as it remained functional. The rest of the Pantheon devoted their time to regaining the divine essence they’d spent building the prison.

Not Hestoc. No, he was always trying to tweak it, to make little changes or sneak things in. At least once a century, Zixin had to come down and remind him of his place. He was but the architect of civilization, not the master of the world.

“There will be no changes. The Pantheon will gather immediately, and we will break the seal. The flood will be unleashed, the God Machine will be protected, and the key will be removed, just like every key that came before him,” she said. “I will expect your presence shortly to participate in the breaking of the seal.”

“It’s going to cause a lot of damage to the eastern continent,” Hestoc warned, as if she didn’t already know that. He forgot who he was speaking to.

“Such is the price of your failure. That is why you will be donating the lion’s share of essence to the ritual.”

His face twisted into an ugly scowl, and he said “Now see here. I’ll contribute my share and not one shred more, the same as everyone else. If the Pantheon stands as one, then let all of us bear the burdens equally.”

“We would, had you alerted us to the problem immediately. Instead, you broke the Covenant and meddled. Consider it a part of your punishment.”

Before Hestoc could reply, Zixin willed herself back to her own domain. She stared down at the soul of Adrevald Lath with its little splinter of divinity that was so much bigger than the mortal soul itself was. It was a bit hypocritcal, but she’d managed to snag Hestoc’s “fingernail” before it had been absorbed into the God Machine. The prisoner wouldn’t be feasting on that.

By all rights, she should have returned the splinter to her brother. But then, he’d already thought it was lost anyway. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and besides, she’d be the one doing all the clean up work after the flood killed thousands and thousands of mortals. She’d earned herself a reward.

She consumed Hestoc’s essence and, not for the first time, considered eating her siblings. But no, the power she gained would not match their combined might as a Pantheon, and right now, they needed that full might. This little snack wouldn’t hurt though. It was barely a nibble.

The soul was discarded. At this point, it had been so thoroughly mutilated by Hesoc’s attentions that it was easier to just recycle it than spin it back out into a new person to be reborn. The pain that soul went through was as indescribable as it was delicious to her. It was rare that she got to destroy a soul anymore, and she savored the experience.

Then it was time to get to work. Zixin reached out to her brothers and sisters, and soon, all six of them were gathered. They all knew why they were here, though only Dar looked excited by the prospect. He would. His followers would fight against the flood, and perhaps even find some measure of victory. Hestoc and Nuvari both gave her sour looks, knowing that their domains would be damaged in the coming months. But cities could be rebuilt and trees could be planted anew. They’d survive.

Luos of the Light and Ramira of Dreams were less interested, here more as a courtesy in the service of the Pantheon than out of any personal desire. Their interactions with Aros were more ethereal, and other than the loss of some inconsequential worshippers on one completely unimportant planet, noted only for its status as the home of the God Machine, the flood wouldn’t inconvenience them at all.

“You know why we are here,” Zixin began, shooting a pointed look at Hestoc. “The seal must be broken and the flood unleashed. All of us will contribute. Hestoc will be the primary in this ritual, and contribute fifty percent of the needed divinity. The rest of us will each contribute ten.”

That drew some surprised looks, but they all knew by now that it was his fault the situation had gotten so out of hand, and none of them objected. Each took their place, and with Hestoc as the primary donor, he led them in merging their powers.

The seal broke, the portal opened, and somewhere deep out in the wilds of the eastern continent, the first demon fell into the world of Aros. It was swiftly followed by another, and as the portal widened, the trickle became a mighty river. They came in all sizes and shapes, no two quite the same, but all united in their hunger for mortal flesh. The demons spread out in every direction, and the world of Aros suffered under their touch.

They would kill anything and everything they came across. And when they finally spread far enough to reach the key, they would kill him too. He would never get near the prison. It was only a matter of time until this problem was resolved, and then the mortals of Aros that survived the flood could begin rebuilding. The God Machine would move sluggishly for a few decades, and everything would be set aright. This was the last key. With his death, the bloodline would be extinguished.

Zixin watched the demons pour into the world, and she smiled. There would be a lot of deaths, and that meant a lot of work for her, but it was worth it. They were about to wipe out the final threat to their plans, after all.