August Intruder- Chapter 211- Miracles (Patreon)

The steel was cold against her fingertips. Ninra held the kitchen knife at the tip, like some knife throwers like to. She breathed in deeply, then let the air out. She was not about to perform a trick, not in her mother’s kitchen, after all.

This was either going to work, or it was going to be a very pointless risk. A reckless thing.

When did you become Ark? She asked herself with a touch of disappointment. What made it funny was that the question did not dissuade her from what she was about to do in anyway.

Preparing herself once more, she looked down at the knife. There was no blunt knife in the house, that was for sure. If she remembered correctly, as a child, she had complained about how a knife wasn’t cutting the way it was supposed to cut, and Uncle Dorthna had enchanted all of them. they were all as sharp as any domestic knife was supposed to be.

The thought made her smile. Growing up, she had used Uncle Dorthna as something of a utility belt. If there was anything annoying, she employed the use of Uncle Dorthna. She couldn’t even remember when she had stopped doing it.

The knife stared up at her.

“Yes, yes,” she said to the steel blade. “Let’s get it over with.”

With that, she tossed the knife up, held out her hand, held her breath, and looked away. The knife reached its highest point, then came falling down. Ninra couldn’t look. It didn’t work if she looked.

It only took her a moment to realize that the knife had not come down.

Did it hit the ceiling?

It was unlikely. She would’ve heard something either way. So, it begged the question; what became of the knife?

She turned her head, looked at her outstretched arm, and found Uncle Dorthna standing there with the knife in his hand. He had a curious look waiting for her.

“Do I want to know?” he asked, now that she was looking at him.

Ninra paused for a moment, like a child caught in a stupid act. “No?”

“I see.” Uncle Dorthna nodded slowly. He looked at the knife, then at her. He stashed the knife away in the kitchen knife holder, then faced her, arms folded over his chest. “Tell me, anyway.”

Ninra frowned a little. No. Actually, she pouted a little. She didn’t like it because it made her feel like a petulant child.

After a very brief moment, she stepped back and placed her back against the wall. She let out a sigh or resignation.

She looked up at Uncle Dorthna and something crossed his eyes. She saw it easily. He knew what she had been doing. He knew what was bothering her.

He sighed. “Nin,” he said very gently.

“Yes, Uncle?” she answered.

“You know you’re no longer [Human], right?”

Ninra shrugged, not sure of how to respond. “But I didn’t get hit by the knife, though.”

“That has nothing to do with anything,” he said with a chuckle.

Ninra cocked a brow at him. “That sounds like me being lucky to me.”

Uncle Dorthna was already shaking his head. “That one’s intentional. Agreements and deals have been made… I wouldn’t say behind your back, but I would say it was without your awareness.”

Ninra’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Deals?”

“Yes.” Uncle Dorthna nodded. “Deals.”

“Mom?”

“Nope.”

“Dad?”

“Nope.”

“Can’t be Ark,” she deduced, shaking her head. “[Demon Lord]s are not offered help. Mel?”

“In all honesty, it wouldn’t really count as help, but yes,” Uncle Dorthna confirmed. “It was not Tar’arkna. It was Mel.”

Ninra paused, her mind fastening on her uncle’s words. “Before I ask what the deal was, why did you say it isn’t help? Are you saying that it was a deal deal. Like, you are getting something in exchange?”

Uncle Dorthna nodded. “Uhuh.”

“Do I want to know?” she asked.

“It’s nothing too serious.” Uncle Dorthna said, arms still folded.

“Alright, then what do you get?”

“Pure mana. Mana at its strongest form. Mel is a natural generator of the stuff, and it helps me.”

“With your…” Ninra paused, eyes darting left and right even though her brain was aware of the fact that her and her uncle were the only ones in the house. “Does it help with your status debuff?”

Uncle Dorthna gave her a look, as if she was being overly dramatic. “Yes,” he said. “It helps with my curse.”

“Oh, I see.” Her eyes darted to the knife in the knife holder then back to her uncle. “So what did I get.”

“For the rest of your life, it is my job to protect you from things you cannot protect yourself from.”

That was a very vague request. Did Mel just ensure that she could only die of old age? And was pure mana that important to Uncle Dorthna that he was willing to agree to that deal?

“Car crash?” she asked.

Uncle Dorthna shook his head. “Nope.”

“So, I’m allowed to die in a car crash but not get stabbed by a knife?”

“A car crash is a natural occurrence, nothing out of your control,” he said. “It’s just a normal thing, similar to eating poisoned berries.”

That didn’t make much sense.

“How are those more natural than this?” she gestured at the whole kitchen, somehow pointing out the knife incident.

“Because sometimes people have to be saved from themselves.” He leaned forward, looked her in the eyes. “Being saved from yourself, Nin, is very necessary.”

Ninra looked into blue eyes and could see that her uncle was completely serious about the conversation.

“I hate this,” she said suddenly.

Uncle Dorthna blinked. “What exactly?” he asked. “Having a cosmic bodyguard or being in the kitchen with me?”

“Having things you won’t answer.”

“I’m confused. What haven’t I answered?”

“I asked you about being [Human] and you said no,” she pointed out.

“I said ‘not today,’ because I had something to deal with.”

“Then there’s the luck thing.” Ninra shook her head as if refusing to agree with something. “How does one begin to quantify luck. Luck does not exist.”

“But blessings and miracles do?” he asked with a raised brow.

Ninra shrugged. “I’m Christian, they do to me.”

Uncle Dorthna said nothing. He just stood there, looking at her, waiting.

Ninra groaned. “Alright, alright. I don’t really believe in them.”

He still said nothing for a while.

Then he chuckled a little. Calmly, he walked over to her side and placed his back against the wall just like her.

“If we are talking from a religious standpoint,” he said. “Miracles are just good luck, and luck is one of the constructs of the Christian God, if you catch my drift. And luck, good or bad, is just a series of coincidences.”

Ninra looked at him. “I already know that.”

“I know you do, but I’m starting from the basics to help you understand how luck works as a stat. May I go on?”

Ninra nodded. “You may.”

“Now, everything in the world, even actions, are related to mana in some way,” he continued. “The whole world is mana. And there in comes luck. Let’s say you work at a production factory with heavy machinery and you look away for a moment to say hello to a friend, and that very action makes you take a step to the left and something falls where you had been only a moment ago that would’ve killed you, that is luck, correct?”

Ninra nodded. “Correct.”

“Do you know that reading the mana in the atmosphere would’ve told you that that thing was falling?”

“There are people with high level observation skills, so I know that,” she confirmed.

“But do you know that it is possible for it to happen without your conscious awareness, no observation at all?”

Ninra did the math. It was possible to know a lot of things subconsciously.

“Possibly,” she answered.

“That is luck.” Uncle Dorthna looked at the ceiling. “Luck is what happens when ambient mana and your body are in tune. If you aren’t looking and you want to press a button next to something dangerous, the mana will guide your hand and you’ll always press the button as long as you have a high enough luck stat.”

“What if a car is about to hit me?”

Uncle Dorthna shrugged. “You could find yourself diving to the side or another car could pull out of nowhere and slam into the initial car.”

“Doesn’t sound like luck to me,” she said, as if she was beginning to win the luck argument.

“Because you are thinking only of that moment where you are about to be hit by a car,” Uncle Dorthna said. “True luck accounted for the moment long ago, actions were already becoming coincidences. The car about to hit you would only be one of many coincidences.” He looked at her. “If luck chooses to guard you, you will become nothing but its prisoner. If your luck chooses to keep you alive, it will.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It can be.”

“And there are people walking around with luck stats all over the place?”

Uncle Dorthna laughed. “Oh, no. Everyone has the same luck stat, which is zero. Sometimes, perhaps once every few thousand years or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, we come across someone like you who gets more than zero for a very brief period of time. But people don’t have negative or positive luck stats. It’s just zero.”

“Even you?”

“Even me.”

“Why?” she asked, genuinely confused. “If you are who you say you are, why don’t you have anything in your luck stat.”

Uncle Dorthna smiled fondly at her. “Because it is not an easy thing being powered by the [Love of God].”

“Aren’t we all loved by God? That’s what the bible teaches.”

“Well, the bible teaches a lot of things. But the bible teaches of the Christian God. We’re talking about God. And I’ll argue that even he doesn’t have his own love.”

“Isn’t that blasphemy?”

“Wouldn’t know. Remember, we aren’t talking about the Christian God here.”

“You make it sound like he’s not real.”

“Real or imaginary doesn’t matter. Anyone with enough experience will tell you that while the absence of proof is not proof of absence, it is also not proof of presence. If you cannot prove that it exists or that it does not exist, you are safer leaving it alone.”

“But there is a god?” she asked.

Uncle Dorthna nodded.

“And you’ve met him?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I feel like I’ve met him. But I know someone who has.”

Ninra wasn’t sure how to feel about this. She was currently being told that while the greatest being alive could not prove the existence of the God that she believed in, he was completely aware of the presence of a God. One that even the interfaces identify and acknowledge as God.

“So the luck came from the [Love of God]?” she asked.

Uncle Dorthna nodded. “Yes, it is one aspect of the skill..”

“There are others?”

“Yes.”

“Like?”

“Like you could ask someone to die and they would.”

Ninra shivered visibly. That sounded terrifying. So, the [Love of God] wasn’t necessarily a good skill morally speaking. If anything, it was a skill that was supposed to worry everyone.

“What about the class?” she asked.

Uncle Dorthna shrugged. “What about it?”

“I’m a human being. Why the hell is being a [Human] also a class. It doesn’t make sense.”

Her uncle sighed. “Would you like to know an origin story?”

Ninra brightened up a little. She couldn’t help it. “Have I ever said no to your stories?”

Uncle Dorthna smiled. “Do you know, that at this very moment, you can count the number of [Human]s alive in existence?”

Ninra did not know that. “Minus you, how many are there?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Uncle Dorthna chuckled. “There is only one [Human] alive in existence right now, and it’s not me.”

Ninra paused. Well, it’s not like he ever told me that he was human.

“So who’s the person?” she asked.

“That is a conversation for the origin story,” Uncle Dorthna said with a smile. “Once upon a time, while I was sojourning through Existence, I stumbled upon a man who had found a woman he had deep feelings for. These feelings were new to him and felt… wrong. I, for my own part, didn’t know anything about said feelings.”

A sudden question popped into Ninra’s mind, and she could not help but ask it. “Have you ever been in love, Uncle?”

Uncle Dorthna paused to look at her. It was a while before he finally spoke.

“I got to know this young man,” he said, ignoring her question. “He was not the brightest, but he was intelligent enough. Then I met the woman he had loved. Eventually, he succumbed to his feelings and her to hers. They consummated their love and had a child. He was strong and powerful, smart. He grew to have the [Hunter] class.”

Just how old are classes? Ninra wondered.

“This man and his wife eventually grew to have another child who grew to have the [Farmer] class.” He smiled fondly. “He was a fun kid, that one. Sadly, one unkind day, he found himself in an altercation with his older brother.” His smile faded. “I’m sure you know the story,” he added with a slight frown.

Ninra nodded. She knew the story. “You knew Adam,” she said.

“I knew them,” he answered. “Adam. Havvah. Qayin. Hevel.” He pressed his lips into a thin line. “They were a nice enough family.”

“Cain killed Abel,” Ninra said, not sure of what to say. Uncle Dorthna looked as if he was talking about a dead beloved friend. “Now Cain walks the world as…”

Her words trailed off as she put a few things together. According to the bible, Cain was cursed to walk the world unable to be murdered as he had murdered Abel. Well, if she was being specific, people would be deterred from murdering him.

Realization dawned on her.

“Adam died,” she said slowly. “The bible said so. So did Eve, and Abel. Cain was cursed to wander and not be killed.” She looked at her uncle. “Cain. He’s the only [Human].”

He reached out and rubbed her hair gently. “You were always the smartest Lockwood.” He smiled, taking his hand back. “The shortest, too.”

“You could’ve stopped at smartest, you know?” she pointed out.

“I know,” he agreed. “But you’re wrong here. Cain’s the not the first [Human].”

“Oh.”

Well… I guess that happened.

She really hoped that Uncle Dorthna was not about to tell her that the bible wasn’t telling her the entire truth and Adam was actually alive and well somewhere out there. She was already having trust issues when it came to the bible because of him.

“It better not be Adam,” she said, voice filled with mock threat.

Uncle Dorthna chuckled. “Nope. Not Adam. And yes, Hevel is dead, even if his case is kind of unique, but that’s a story for another day.”

Ninra didn’t want it to be a story for another day. But she could not argue.

“Anyway,” Uncle Dorthna continued, “They eventually had Shet.”

“Seth?” she asked for clarification.

Her uncle nodded. “He was… an interesting boy. Very different from his brothers. According to the stories, he gained the [Human] class when he was of age.”

“According to stories,” Ninra said, latching onto the phrase. “If there is something you taught me, Uncle Dorthna, it is that phrasing is important. You know what really happened, don’t you?”

Uncle Dorthna nodded. “I do.”

“But you won’t tell me, will you?”

He shook his head. “I won’t.”

“Will you tell me why?”

He looked at her, thought about it. “Only if you’ll keep it a secret from your brothers.”

“Why?”

“Because at some point in time, I fear that one if not both of them will go looking for something that has to do with the answer.”

“Oh. Then I’ll keep your secret.”

“Everyone powerful enough knows Hevel got the class [Human]. What they don’t know is the title that came with the class.”

Ninra caught herself leaning towards her uncle. “What title.”

“Shet, son of Adam,” he said, “is also the [First Man].”

“Oh the person that has your—”

Uncle Dorthna’s eyes hardened, silencing Ninra.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “I forgot.”

“It’s fine.” Uncle Dorthna’s eyes softened.

They fell into a comfortable silence then. Well, comfortable for her. Uncle Dorthna’s attention kept on shifting, as if he was paying attention to something else. Knowing him, Ninra wouldn’t be surprised if he was. For all she knew, he could be watching some Chinese drama on the television of some family Kuwait.

“Must be tough to know,” she said suddenly.

Uncle Dorthna moved his attention to her, ignoring what had had it before for a moment. “To know what?”

“That I’m not actually human,” she muttered. It was, in its own way, demeaning. The confidence of being a person was in being human.

“Says who?”

She looked at him, saw the confusion on his face. “Says the interface.”

“Let me get this right.” He turned to face her. “If someone bakes for a living and bakes amazing things but doesn’t have the [Baker] class, does that mean that the person is not a baker?”

Ninra didn’t to think about it. “No.”

“In the same way, just because you do not have the [Human] class, it doesn’t make you any less human, Nin. Do not allow the interface make you feel like you are any less than you are. A baker who has succeeded in being a baker is just as much of a baker as someone with the [Baker] class.” He held her gaze now, and she could not look away. “The same rules apply to being human.”

“But there is a difference,” she said.

Uncle Dorthna sighed. “There is.”

“What is the difference?”

“If I were to say, it would be one thing. The one thing the keeps the [Human] class apart from every other class and humans. A God skill.”

“World skills are assumed to be gifts from the world, the world’s acknowledgement of you, so to speak,” Ninra mused. “That would mean that a God skill is a gift from God. God’s acknowledgement of you… so to speak. Sounds like a massive difference.”

“Trust me,” Uncle Dorthna looked away from her. “God is overrated.”

Ninra shrugged. “Still a big difference, though.”

“If you need God to feel worthy or to be, Nin, then you do not deserve to be worthy or to be. I hope you are not the only member of your family that does not understand this.”

Ninra paused, surprised. “Dad understands this?”

“Your father doesn’t care. To protect his family, he’ll kill God if he has to.”

That was surprising. There was no greater zealot for God than her father in the family. “What of mom?” she asked.

“Your mother has seen more than enough darkness in the world since she was born to believe that God gives two sticks about her.”

“Ark?”

Uncle Dorthna chuckled. “He’s happy to be a [Demon Lord]. That should tell you everything you need to know.”

“And Mel?”

“Mel,” her uncle sighed. “Mel doesn’t count. I don’t think he can even bring himself to care even if he tried.”

With that, he turned and started heading towards the door, as if he had not just told Ninra who was still fighting over the existential crisis of if she was really a human being that her brother was not a human being anymore but a god.

“Speaking of Mel, come with me,” he said. “Stay close, now.”

Ninra hadn’t even known when she’d started following him until they walked out of the kitchen.

“Why?” Ninra asked, thinking about how Mel could not care about God even if he wanted to. Was it because he was too logical and thoughtful? “Why doesn’t Mel count?”

“Because he’s an [August Intruder], Nin.” Uncle Dorthna closed the door behind them. “Mel is a god.”

…

At least he’ll be on the level of one.

Dorthna closed the door behind him and Ninra and turned to the focus of his attention. Ark and Melmarc were currently grappling on the hospital bed. Ark was trying to pin Mel down.

“Go grab a chair,” he told Ninra as he walked up to the brother.

It was not her first time following him through space, so the change of scenery did not surprise her. while she struggled with the idea of her brother being a god, she rushed off tto get a chair.

As for Dorthna, he walked up to Ark and Mel. It was a moment before they noticed him. Both of them froze, eyes on him.

Dorthna cocked his head to the side when he saw Melmarc’s eyes.

“I take it you killed an Oath from another world,” he said, not really surprised. He sniffed the air, not that he needed to. “Desolation, I take it.”

Melmarc paused, looked at him. Ark stopped struggling as well, his eyes glanced from him to Ninra walking off then back.

“Hello, boys,” Dorthna said.

Melmarc’s eyes searched his. Dorthna wasn’t sure what was going through the boy’s mind, but if there was one thing he could see hiding behind those night-black eyes, it was a question. Melmarc was chock full of them.

Jabari had a habit of erasing himself from the memories of people that did not suit his goals, and Melmarc did not suit his goals. So, Jabari was not going to be the question.

“Go on then,” he said, arms folded over his chest. “Ask.”

And ask Melmarc did.

“Who,” he said, “is Jabari?”

Dorthna paused.

Well… he had not seen that one coming.