The woman's voice rang in Roley's ears like honey, but not in a sensual way. A manner of pride and regality was present. She spoke not as a beautiful woman eager to be courted by the young hero, but as a goddess, gracing a holy warrior with the gift of her voice. Or at least, that was how Roley had perceived it. While sweet and melodic, these words did not affect Roley's mind. Whether that was due to the protection the primordial powers had granted him or due to the contrasting natures the two possessed, he could not be sure.
"What is there for us to talk about?" He asked while casually throwing observing gazes at his surroundings. Now closer, his perspective over the prostrating entities had changed. While from afar he could not make out the intentions behind these people's behavior, he could now see that they had been kowtowing with joy. Some did so whilst ignoring the damage that kneeling onto the pale stone for days, weeks, and sometimes years, had done to their bodies, while some others saw their wounds reflected in the droplets of blood they spat out as they exhaled.
Bothered by this grim spectacle, Roley did his best to swallow his feelings. After all, there was a reason why he had agreed to entertain this conversation.
"Mhm." the woman gently moaned, visibly happy about Roley's willingness to converse. "I used to know the elementalist. We met a long time ago." She purred while continuing to walk her slow and steady laps around him. Her bare feet tapped the platform's surface like a slow clap, alternating in his ears as she stepped to his right, then to his left. "How did you do it? How did you take his gift?" She then asked. fr(e)ewebnov(e)l.com
"Greed. He merged his gift with my body, then failed to claim both." Roley chose to answer truthfully, as his very presence was a testament to the Elementalist's desires. His body, carved with spheres of pure elemental might, and eyes of primordial light and darkness, were all the hints the woman needed to guess the truth, in any case. He was an oddity, a natural deity whose nature went beyond common gifts or hard earned cultivation. Unique was hard to hide.
Of course, he was right. The woman had already guessed what had happened to the elementalist. She could remember her brother's greed, and his pursuit of a being with a body of peerless elements. He was on Roley's trail, the last time she had met him. The brief time that had preceded his disappearance.
What she was truly interested in was a different kind of information. A slip up, hidden in between words of a boring tale that could tell her how Roley had gotten so close to ascending. "Not a storyteller, I see." She muttered in audible disappointment. "I will be less subtle then, seeing as we are at an impasse." she then added before finally stopping in front of the scholar.
Her visage had lost its regality, as her flushed lips parted gently. Her eyes, filled with eagerness and desire as she started, "It matters not how you have obtained my brother's gift, nor the situation we are currently in. What matters is that we are now one and the same. Spawn of a pariah, and nemesis of beings of unfair power. That makes us allies of sorts."
Roley's eyes curved into a faint smile. "Yet, here you are. Living pretty comfortably under Sacrifice's umbrella."
His words seemed to strike a nerve, for the woman answered to them with flaring nostrils, risen brows, and eyes filled with hate. "A lapdog!" She barked out hatefully. "Picked up from the streets and put into use. Fangs dulled, claws ripped away! Caged into this forgotten universe for as long as I'll live." Regret had found its way on the woman's face. She had not liked her fate. In fact, she hated it. Her desire for expansion, conquest and conflict had been taken from her, and while she was safer than the average champion of Destiny, the crippling of her nature had also made her the unhappiest of them all.
Naturally, the woman's feelings failed to breach Roley's defenses in their attempt to draw from him a spark of empathy. Not as much as the uncountable creatures who, throughout their conversation, had yet to stop their religious rites that fed her system with the power of devotion.
Unaware of Roley's lack of compassion, the woman regained her composure. A switch was flipped, and in mere moments, her eyes turned back to its aloof and noble semblance, while her mouth relaxed. "You came here to take something, and you have the power to. You could kill me here and now, and lose your followers, or you can trade with me."
The primordial powers that lingered close to Roley's skin reacted to the woman's threats. They stirred, and reached for her angrily, guided by their summoner's emotions, but then stopped, shy of the woman's skin by only a few inches. "Speak then. What do you want from me?" Roley inquired, struggling to maintain his calm.
"I want to know how to ascend." The woman blurted out, too eager to dance around the topic. "Tell me how, and I will release your people, and leave this place in your hands."
"What makes you think I know how to ascend?" Roley asked with curiosity. He knew that, by this point, some aspects of existence had probably made the connection between him and Daniel. But how could she? Were his movements across the multiverse that much of public knowledge? freew ebnove l.com
Luckily, his worries were soon dispelled.
"I can feel that you are one of my kin. Even without my system's failure to act around your presence, in my eyes, your gift is a beacon." She explained. "But it is also different. The glow is sharper, and of a different intensity. Not as oppressive as a power of existence, but far stronger than mine." Her voice turned solemn. "You are close to it, more than any other I have met."
"I see." Roley muttered. He knew what the gracious woman was talking about, as Daniel had already made that connection. One that was far beyond the woman's expectations.
Simply put, he was just different. His closeness to the threshold was not dictated by the power his system accumulated, but by the artificial way he had approached it. His path was different, artificial. Every treasure that was added to his body was a crucial step to him becoming the existence of nature itself. Not evolved by Destiny's gift, like a tree born from a sprout, but put together, like an immense stone wall.
But, alas, she couldn't know. After all, for all she knew, everything Roley had obtained could have been attributed to the magical nature of Iewah's gift. She did not know how mistaken she was of asking him, as the only person who could have answered her question was the only entity that had, in a field of sprouts, grown into a majestic tree. And that person was Daniel, the aspect of karma.
Nevertheless, Roley did not bother correcting her, as he had had no intention of answering this question, even if he had a satisfactory answer to give. From what he had seen her nature brought nothing but suffering. Her ascension into a full fledged aspect of existence would be nothing less than a disaster. One he would stop at all cost.
Yet, he did not refuse to answer outright. He was buying time, after all.
"You would dare betray your master, for that tidbit of information?" Roley asked.
The lack of outright refusal brought a tinge of excitement in the woman's eyes. Her soft lips parted, and her silvery voice rang once more, "I will take the risk. My power might be nothing compared to his now, but I am confident to escape his grasp long enough to ascend."
"Mhm." Roley nodded in feigned satisfaction, then his feet moved. First the right, then the left, they alternated as he mimicked the woman's previous actions, and he started tracing laps around her standing figure. "And then what? He kept you for a reason. Your power, were you to ascend, would be subservient to his. That would not change." He pointed out with a tone that matched his appearance. An academic, exchanging theories with a colleague.
The point Roley had made was perfectly valid. The hierarchy of the aspects of existence was not dictated by influence, for that was only a natural consequence. The only important factor was the aspect's nature. For example, conflict was omnipresent, formed not only by the conflict of mortals, beasts or cultivators, but by air attrition, the erosion brought by time, and the very clash of atoms. Its influence could not be lower than that of War, for all war was conflict, but not all conflict was war.
Even if the woman managed to ascend, becoming the aspect of devotion, her nature would only be a fraction of Sacrifice's. Every person that prostrated at her feet, or gave up their time of day to pray in her name, would be sacrificing something. An action that would increase her influence, as much as Sacrifice's own.
A simple reality of which the woman was well aware of. And yet, her eyes did not show any of the dejection Roley had expected, but an even deeper excitement.
"This is where you are wrong, dear." The woman said, turning around to face her opponent, her tone oddly friendly. "My ears are everywhere."
The slits of Roley's eyes narrowed, hiding most of the darkness and light the two spheres emanated. A simple change in expression, but also one that, to the woman's enthusiastic state of mind, was perceived as a sign of curiosity. "Have you ever heard of the aspect of Karma?" She asked, eager for a reply.
"I have." Roley answered, now solemn and tense.
"He was once one of us, a spawn of Iewah like me, and the one you took the gift from. Or at least, he was, until he ascended." The enthusiasm in the woman's voice had grown clearer, and she now appeared more of a fanatic, than the aloof goddess she had been only minutes earlier. "He lives free, and unafraid. No need to hide, or avoid confrontation.. And yet he still stands."
"He is him, and you are you." Roley pointed out with a matter-of-fact tone.
By now, the woman had lost all semblance of regality. Her eyes wide open, her body squirming with excitement as she stepped closer, stopping Roley in his tracks. So close that the scholar could count the number of golden lashes that crowned the jewels that were her eyes, and feel the warmth of her breath onto his skin. "Don't you understand? We are not alone. There are hundreds of our kind across the multiverse, battle tested and starving for the power that we deserve!"
"This is what we were made for. We were made to ascend, and replace those old heads as true gods. We just need somewhere to start. Tell me how!"
The more the woman spoke, the more her demands turned into a desperate plea. Roley could feel in her words, in her tone, how much she had desired to break free from the cycle. To be a second Karma, and stand at the top of the multiverse. A destiny far more deserving that the servitude she had been forced into as an only alternative to death.
Big dreams and aspirations, Roley commended in his head. But that was all there was to it. A scoff was his only response, one that left the woman shocked and confused. "No." He said quietly as his eyes gently brushed over the woman's subjects. The pools of dried blood and sweat underneath them reminding him that their torture had never stopped. Not even once. "You don't deserve it."
You don't deserve it. Four simple words, and yet the strongest blow the woman had ever received. She staggered, stepping away from her opponent as her divine features turned cold. A goddess of beauty once, now a goddess of vengeance. "Very well." her silvery voice once again drifted into his ears. "Pain it is." She said as a storm of elementals shot towards the platform, charging against their most despised enemy, the nemesis of their goddess, the one who they had once referred to as their Lord. In their minds, death was the only outcome to his survival.
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