TMLoCL - Extra - Chaurl P2

The back half of Chaurl's Extra.

I don't plan on do many splits like this - both P1 and P2 are meant to be one whole chapter and will be released as such on RR, but the back half of this Extra was maddening.  Even now it just feels wrong, but I don't think I could fix it without making this Extra way longer.

And this isn't "The Life of Chaurl Kent," so I decided to take a lot of it to the chopping block.

Do let me know if there are problems with this one, most of the writing for it took place during or between panic attacks and editing my own work has always proven hard.  Whenever I read I tend to miss mistakes because I see what should be there instead of what is.  Brains are weird.

***

“Where are you?” I was really afraid.  There was no one nearby, yet I had heard someone speak to me!  “Who are you?”

“An interesting question,” the voice answered - it sounded like it was smiling.  “Considering what I am, asking where I am might be a singularly pointless question.”

The voice was…  Inside my head?  I didn’t understand what it was saying though…

“Yes, I imagine you are a bit too young to understand the metaphysical implications of an entity actually being a concept.  In fairness to you Chaurl, everyone else in your temple is too young as well; humans are like mayflies…” I kept looking around, but the voice really was coming from inside me and I was getting really, really scared!

I was going to call out, even if it got me in trouble, but I couldn’t.  My mouth wouldn’t open!

“I never was good with children…  So many of them give up their dreams as they become adults.” The voice seemed to mumble that before announcing, “Listen well child, for I am Jakkus, the God of Ambition.”

I didn’t notice that I had fallen to the floor for a while.  I found my forehead against the ground, bleeding from a cut and shakily pushed myself up.  I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t!  I didn’t think meeting a god would be like this and I didn’t like it!

“Truly, the dreams of children are more fragile than their lives,” Ambition noted as he spoke to me.  “Yet I am not so easily swayed.  You may have just barely met the requirements set forth by Order to allow my interference, but you did meet them.  You will serve my plan, and be rewarded for it - and perhaps it will fan the flames of your own ambition…”

“[You have met the requirements for the Class: [Initiate]!]

[You have 9 open Class Slots.]

[You have Classes available, would you like to see them now?]

[Jakkus, God of Ambition, has assigned you the Class: [Initiate]!]

[You are now an [Initiate].]

[You have gained the Skill: [Prayer]!]

[You have gained the Skill: [Ambition is Life]!]

[You have 8 Class Slots remaining.]”

Suddenly, I was alone in the temple library and I started to cry and kept crying until the Wisdoms returned me to mom.

*Kingdom of Frakus, The Grand Temple, Nine Years Ago*

It is easy, I suppose, to envy the Gods.  Easy to see their servants wield powers beyond mortal comprehension with seeming ease and want it for yourself.  The few friends I had outside the Temple thought as much and could never understand why I felt pity for them.  But in the nine years since I had been chosen by Jakkus, I had gained a better understanding of what it really meant for them to be a concept as much as a being.

As an [Initiate] I had been moved into classes meant for older children and I had struggled, but I did learn.  I learned things that terrified me as a child - what child wouldn’t get nightmares when they learned that the Gods of their stories were very nearly mad?  The very reason that they weren’t insane was what was also driving them to it, and it was that their nature was absolute.

We interchanged their names and domains because effectively there were no differences between the two; Jakkus was Ambition and Ambition was Jakkus.

These were the thoughts that went through my head as I wrote my essay, taking the test to receive an [Acolyte’s] training.  It was the subject I had chosen to write on: the inherent contradiction of my God, that even two ambitions that were mutually exclusive were both equally part of him - and that there could be as many ambitions as there were thinking beings.

While I had originally been scared, and then angry, that Jakkus had forced me to take him as my patron, I now knew that he could never have done otherwise.  Order was given a choice at the very beginning, but no God ever had a real choice in their actions since.  The most powerful could somewhat choose how they would arrive at a future point, but that they would arrive at that event was a foregone conclusion and even in that choice they were severely limited.

Ambition already knows that he will fail to break free of those shackles, and yet he must try.  He already knows that I will not be able to further his plans, and yet he could do nothing but choose me as a pawn in a game he already lost.

And so I pity him.

Personally, I doubt I am any more free to choose than Jakkus is - but there is a difference between that doubt and certain knowledge.  Moreover, I am not bound to any absolute.  If my life is already chosen for me, then that is something I could learn to live with.

And most importantly, the way the human mind works I am granted the illusion of choice even if there are none.  I make my own decisions, or so I feel, but I don’t need it to be true.  It is that mere feeling - the emergent illusion of time and choice - that preserves me from the madness that nips at the heels of the Gods themselves.

Of course, I don’t write down that I have come to share my God’s ambition, although that is what the Wisdoms assumed I would do anyway.  Almost every true worshipper of Jakkus agrees with their God’s ultimate desire, because what Ambition truly desires is choice itself.  The pinnacle of Ambition is met when they are granted the choice to choose everything, anything, or nothing and are not bound to choose any one of them.

In short, Jakkus wants freedom.

After I hand my essay in to the Wisdom, I go to see my mother.  It had only been a few years ago that I had learned the truth: short of asking Truth herself, I would never know who my father was.  Mom was a [Priestess] of Life, and one of the requirements to become a [Priestess] of Life was to have a child.  She had known nothing of my father, save what she learned of him as they spoke over a drink at a bar and he probably did not know that I even existed.

Yet this knowledge did not stop me from hugging her now, nor did it make me feel any less loved by her.  That she had such a reason to have a child did not stop her from being a caring and loving mother and I had come to appreciate the ambition she showed.  Some of that appreciation was bleed over from Jakkus himself and it was one of the things I was most thankful to him for.

To worship the Gods was to be changed by them, affected by them.  Each one influenced their [Priests] in different ways and the [Priests] of Jakkus were known for enjoying the vision of an action equal to or more than the substance of it.  Without Jakkus’s influence, I think I would have been more hurt when I learned that to a certain extent I was something to check off a list.

It had hurt though, even though she did love me.  I had spent less time at the Temple after that, preferring to explore the city itself when I had the time.  Being able to feel the ambitions of people around me made it a fascinating experience.  Inside the Temple the ambitions of [Priests] tended to be cold and quiet, but at the same time hard and unwavering.  They knew their goals and pursued them with the patience of inevitability, for they had been granted surety by the Gods themselves.

But in the city, ambitions flared and faded, blazed and shifted!  I could watch as the spark of an idea passed through the mind of a man and they burned with desire and possibility, only for the flames to sputter out as reality reasserted itself over them.  People were quick to have grand ambitions, and just as quick to give them up.

It was last year that I, watching the ambitions of people around me rather than the people themselves, had wandered into a seedier part of the city.  Thankfully, the robes of an [Initiate] had kept me safe - mostly because anyone who saw them recognized that I would have nothing on me anyway.

I had, unknowingly, tailed the lieutenant of a powerful gang into one of the underground bars they owned.  Underground in this case because of their illegal fighting ring, drug sales, and prostitution.  I had been confronted there, because my robes only kept me so safe and they had no desire for the servants of Justice to come down on them.

I was still in somewhat of a trance however, and didn’t reply to them.  I watched the people around me until one of their [Thugs] hauled me up by the collar.

“And what,” the lieutenant snarled at me.  “Is so interesting that you would ignore a knife to your throat?”

“That woman,” I said, pointing at one of the whores who worked here.  “Probably is wasted doing just that.  You should offer her an opportunity to do something more.”

“What?”

“Can’t you see how much she wants something more?” I asked, hardly noticing the confused [Thug] and [Gang Underboss].  “Can’t you feel the strength of her desire?  Given a chance - any chance - she would pour her soul into it.”

“Only one kind of [Priest] talks like that,” an older voice came from the back.  “It has been a while since I have seen a worshipper of Ambition, and a Chosen one to boot.”

“Being Chosen really isn’t very impressive,” I automatically replied.  It sounded impressive, sure, but realistically anyone with a religious Class had been Chosen.  The Gods weren’t often obvious about it, because their Chosen usually found their way to the Temple without much intervention.  But the public was only interested in the flashy kinds of Choosing and rarely paid attention to the usual ones.

I had very nearly gotten a punch to the gut for saying that - if the [Crime Lord] hadn’t stopped the [Thug] he would have given me a “lesson in respect.”

“Now, now,” the criminal lord had said.  “Leave the kid alone, he probably doesn’t even know where he is and he might be useful to us.”

That had been last year, and I had agreed to help the criminals.  Of course, I hardly saw it that way, I saw it as giving people who wanted something more the chance to do so.  Was it wrong?  A [Priest] of Justice might say so, but I didn’t think the problem was me.

As I had become more used to the chaos outside the Temple, I realized that I had been distracted by the number of ambitions and how quickly they could change.  As I spent more time around the citizens of the city of all classes, I realized that very few really had great ambition.

In fact, most barely cared or thought about what they could be or do.

The [Lords] and [Ladys] that I saw visiting the Temples had ambition within their political games, but that was a petty thing.  How many actually wanted to improve the land they governed or improve the lives of those under them?  No - how many thought it was even possible?

And I could see why they doubted, because the majority of the populace was perhaps not content, but definitely resigned to their fate.  Few sought to Level seriously, fewer still sought rare or special Classes.  They merely… Existed.

And existed miserably.

Hunger and disease were common in the slums, and the only source of Levels and money to be found was in crime.  How could Justice blame them for wanting more?  One Level or one coin might be the difference between life and death when the next winter sweeps the weak from the world.  Where was the justice in that?

I started taking lessons at the underground bar, eventually earning the [Brawler] Class.  My time in the city had made me come to believe that my God was right, the World needed a change.  The World needed something more.

*Kingdom of Frakus, Royal Palace, Two Years Ago*

I had come with the [Priestesses] of Truth and Justice to the Royal Palace on a whim.  I wished to see what the ambition of royalty looked like, but now I suspected that a [Priest] or [Priestess] of Love had interfered somewhere because I can only say that it was love at first sight.

I had only thought that I had seen ambition burn before, but before this inferno I knew I had only seen the barest of sparks.

“I did say I would reward you, child.” Jakkus whispered into my mind, “This meeting was your purpose - whether you make something more of it is up to you.  You are to approach Ylma and work with her.”

Well obviously I was going to approach her, although I could already see that I wasn’t like her.  I might be a servant of Ambition itself, but she burned brighter than me.  Perhaps she would have the courage to have spoken up, but I didn’t and I told myself it wasn’t the right time.