Chapter 849 – Day of the blue suns (Patreon)

A man sat cross-legged atop a bush-covered hill, the sharp thorns of the brittle plants pressing against his ragged clothes without piercing them. The Favoured Ones of Gallimus wore yellow training robes, held together by wide green belts, while most of their deities wore crimson robes instead.

He... was one of a handful of people allowed to wear pure white robes. The fabric was still torn and full of holes, but that was intentional. The damaged clothes were meant to symbolize the sacrifices that the most privileged among their people had to make – the suffering and responsibility that they had to bear – in service of their planet.

Furious arcs of blood-red lightning flashed far above his head, illuminating the cracked patches of skin on his hairless scalp. The crimson bolts were followed by deafening claps of thunder, though neither phenomenon was natural. Both effects had been induced by him, as he projected his internal world onto his surroundings and pressed his mana against the boundary, trying to alter the very rules that governed Gallimus at a fundamental level.

Imposing his will upon reality wasn’t a new experience for someone like Obatala.

Every titan in the universe had, by definition, already succeeded at altering the laws of existence at least once in their life. The most skilled among them could repeat the feat as often as they liked, while others had only cast their Decree by sheer coincidence, and would never come close to casting it a second time.

Obatala belonged in the former category, more or less.

He controlled his Decree well enough to reapply it in its original form if he wished. He couldn’t necessarily cast it on a whim, but he was guaranteed to succeed at least once every ten thousand attempts, so he could have spread it to a second planet within a few decades – had his people owned one, and had he been capable of setting foot on another world without provoking the Ancient’s wrath.

The problem was that he wasn’t trying to reapply his Decree in its default state, but to improve upon it beyond merely expanding its scope or slightly tweaking its requirements. He was already happy with how those components worked, as his Approval had spread across the entire planet and activated whenever it was supposed to, granting its benefits to any mortal who had earned them.

Obatala’s goal for hundreds of thousands of years had been to strengthen his Decree. It was about the hardest thing a titan could aim for, because casting any Decree already required one hundred percent of a god’s effort. Unfortunately, he didn’t feel any closer to succeeding than when he had first embarked on that impossible project.

Something faintly shifted beyond the veil of clouds, drawing his attention.

‘It’s a little early for a change of seasons.’ He frowned. ‘Don’t tell me... is there another one already?’

Drawing his internal world back into his body, he brushed the mundane clouds aside with a gentle wave of his hand to reveal a pair of suns burning in the sky, one larger and closer than the other. The twin stars of their solar system shone with an unmistakable blue colour today, rather than their usual red.

Obatala chuckled, his throat tight with bitterness upon confirming his suspicions. ‘It truly is. Almost as if the heavens themselves are mocking me.’

Perhaps what he had spent most of his life trying to accomplish had been impossible from the very start. Maybe he should be happy with the half-baked domains that he had given his people. Obatala had already made every Gallimian mortal or deity above Green significantly stronger than they had any right to be, yet perhaps nobody but those monsters could ever wield the object of his obsession.

Sighing, he sent out a telepathic message to his subordinate, powered by the full might of his Seventeenth Circle magic. ‘Aje, update me on the situation. How long have I remained in seclusion?’

The younger goddess responded with a wave of surprise. ‘Lord Obatala? Have you finally decided to take a break?’

‘I find it difficult to focus on my failed project when the stars are celebrating the real thing over my head,’ he admitted. ‘What of our guest? Has he returned to Gallimus yet?’

Aje didn’t respond through the mental link. Instead, she stepped out of a portal that opened a few metres in front of Obatala a couple of seconds later. She took a handful of steps towards him, the brittle bushes snapping against her knees as her feet left deep impressions in the dried dirt, though the Fourteenth Circle deity naturally seemed entirely unbothered by their planet’s powerful gravity.

“Lord Obatala,” she greeted, inclining her head slightly and respectfully cupping a fist in her opposite palm. “Percy has visited us over a hundred times since we last spoke. I’ve escorted him to the Sapphire Pavilion’s auctions every single year, as you instructed, but I’ve had to keep apologizing for your inability to meet him.”

Obatala’s face fell, appalled by the revelation. “Making him wait for a full century... how inconsiderate of me...”

He honestly hadn’t realized that he’d isolated himself for that long. To him, a year didn’t feel all that different from a millennium, though he probably should have been more mindful of their ally’s perspective. Based on what Aje and Duwa had told Obatala, Percy had only been a few decades old when he had first interacted with their people. The past century would have constituted most of the young man’s life.

“Has my negligence offended him?” he asked, worried about the answer.

It would have been unthinkable for any other deity in the universe to concern themselves about making a mortal wait a few decades, but Obatala didn’t think that his status entitled him to disrespecting others.

“No, sir. The boy has worked hard to establish a good relationship with us, and he’s not the kind of person who would hold a grudge over something so petty. He’s generously agreed to pass the Moirais’ Decree to a different person every time he visits, in exchange for our help. He’s never complained about the delay in meeting you,” Aje explained, sounding almost proud of the young foreigner. “He even gifted us a second-generation World Tree sapling a few decades ago. I tried to refuse, as it felt like too much in addition to the secret of the cyan powder that he’d already shared with our people, but he insisted that he had no other use for it, and that he didn’t want his friends dying of old age out of stubbornness.”

Obatala’s palm slid involuntarily down his face, dragging his features along. “How is it that our debt to this mortal only keeps growing rather than shrinking?”

Aje shrugged, looking like she’d already come to terms with the situation a long time ago. “Percy... is a very interesting young man, sir. I used to be surprised by his every action, but I’m starting to think that we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg so far. If I may make a bold prediction, I believe that his name will reverberate through the universe even more loudly than theirs,” she said, glancing at the pair of blue stars.

Obatala furrowed his brow. “That’s a bit much, isn’t it? Is he really that talented?”

“Undoubtedly,” Aje insisted with a firm nod. “I’ve felt his domain several times, and it’s beyond impressive. I’m not sure how he’s able to channel it to his clones or what exactly he’s capable of with his real body, but it seems to me like the universe has neglected to make a spectacle out of at least one prodigy’s birth.”

“Ha! Now you’ve made me even more eager to talk to him,” Obatala exclaimed. “What of his friend? Have we at least managed to return him to Rom, like we promised?”

The goddess sighed. “We’ve escorted Tiberius to the Sapphire Pavilion every single year, but his people haven’t shown up again. We’ve even asked the Attendants for Rom’s coordinates on the mortal’s behalf, but it’s against their policy to share information about a client faction’s planets without explicit permission from their deities.”

Obatala felt that some of the Pavilion’s rules were beyond silly. The Attendants had no issue allowing their clients to sell each other’s coordinates or even more sensitive secrets at the auctions, but the three-handed people refused to directly betray their clients’ trust and even went above and beyond to protect the sellers from the consequences of their lots.

Then again, what did a god from a newly risen greater spring like him know? The appearance of neutrality that the Pavilion had carefully maintained around their business since time immemorial was probably what had allowed them to grow as powerful and influential as they had.

“Keep bringing Tiberius along until you succeed, but make sure that he feels welcome on our planet until then. Treat him and Percy like you would our own Favoured Ones,” Obatala instructed. “It would be a true shame if we failed to properly uphold even this one promise of ours. If we play our cards right, we’ll end up gaining two powerful allied factions out of a single chance encounter.”

Rom obviously wasn’t the most developed lesser spring, but Tiberius had also learned about the cyan powder, so he would turn his planet into a greater spring if he ever made it home. And he’d been given a second core by Percy as well, so he might become a powerful deity one day.

“Of course, sir,” Aje replied with a nod, her expression suggesting that she’d already been acting in accordance to his instructions. “The next auction is only a few days away. Should I bring Percy to you when he arrives?”

“Naturally,” Obatala said, glancing up at the blue suns once more and prompting his subordinate to follow his gaze. “I suppose that this is as good an opportunity as any to explain what I’ve been trying to do. If he’s half as talented as you say, he might have better luck perfecting his domain than our people have had with theirs.”