August Intruder- Chapter 245- The Territory of God (Patreon)

“First,” Dorthna said, looking down at the [First Man], “would you get your ass up. All this royalty shenanigans is tiring.”

The man paused, hesitant. He raised his bowed head to give Dorthna a quizzical look. “It would seem that in your time away you have advanced your speech.”

Dorthna cocked a sarcastic brow at that. “Advanced my speech? Is that what you’re going with now?”

The [First Man] was often a little too polite. The only thing that made it tolerable was that as long as he spent long enough in the conversation, the man would eventually slip away from his politeness to something more informal.

“It is most… dare I say, eloquent,” the man replied.

“Oh suck a flopper,” Dorthna returned, “I talk like a child sometimes.”

The man hesitated but did not correct him. “I felt it was intentional.”

Intentional was not what Dorthna would call it. The thing with life was that no matter how powerful you became, a being was always susceptible to adaptation of different kinds. Some, like talking like a child, snuck up on them when they spent too much time with children.

“So, tell me, Shet,” he said, looking at the man’s pants, “before we continue, what are those about again?”

Shet smiled a little. “It has been forever since I was last called by my real name. Time, for some reason, has left people believing that my name is Seth.”

“A mere variation,” Dorthna dismissed. “Now, the pants.”

Shet looked down at the piece of clothing. “A gift,” he explained.

“For?”

“Looking for Melchizedek.”

Dorthna chuckled a little, knowing the answer to his next question. “Did you find him?”

The man shook his head. “Nope. But on to more important things. I thought you and I were the only ones who can access this place.” He looked around, at the darkness and the creatures clawing about within it. “How did a child get here? And why don’t you look bothered?”

“I don’t look bothered because I know the child. Good kid. Holds back a little too much, if you ask me,” Dorthna said. “As for how he got here. I think he’s built something of a connection to a creature that was once here.”

Shet’s brows furrowed. “A creature left the void after being sent here.”

“Oh, come of it,” Dorthna laughed. “It’s difficult but not really impossible.”

“And was there a reason you let him open the door even if a little?” the man asked. “You could’ve stopped him.”

“I needed him to feel the fear that you feel now. The perfect being must learn to overcome that fear, or to at least survive it. As you do.”

The man came to a stop next to Dorthna, and Dorthna knew that he would venture no closer as long as the door remained open.

“Tell me about the search for Melchizedek,” he instructed, seeking to distract Shet while he also consorted with his own thoughts.

Regarding what had happened here, he needed to know if God was finally paying attention to him once more. He needed to know if God was finally taking him seriously.

Shet paused, thought about the question. “He is nowhere this side of Existence, if that is what you are asking.”

“It is not what I am asking,” Dorthna confirmed. “What else?”

“Salem is still empty.” Shet slipped his arms into his pocket and shrugged. “A Melchizedek still sits on the altar.”

“Nothing new there.” Dorthna knew that the last place to look for Melchizedek was in Salem. “He always felt claustrophobic there. He said it felt like God was staring daggers at him.”

Shet paused. “God is in Salem?” he blurted out, horrified.

Dorthna cocked a brow at his reaction. “Really? Your father told you stories of how he walked with God, and finding out God is in Salem horrifies you?”

“I just didn’t… I wasn’t…” Shet’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I didn’t think he would be there.”

“Because he’s not,” Dorthna said with a sigh. “People would think that being one of the oldest beings in Existence, you would be able to pay attention to words and not jump to conclusions. Melchizedek said that it felt like God was staring daggers at him. God is not in Salem any more that he is in your not so humble abode.”

“My abode is humble enough.”

“Focus Shet.” Dorthna snapped his fingers at him. “Any leads on where Zed might be?”

“There is a part of Existence I haven’t checked, but that’s because nobody checks there.”

“And?”

“He might be there.” Shet sounded uncertain. “I can’t be sure. But Melchizedek has never been an easy being to find.”

“Call him a man or a [Priest],” Dorthna corrected Shet absently. “He hates being called anything else since he really isn’t anything else. What about the Order?”

“The Order of Melchizedek continues to spread, even to worlds that have not awoken to mana. At this point, God is the most popular of all beings even to those unaware of him. How he did that is beyond me.”

“It’s his faith stats.” Even thinking about it annoyed Dorthna. “Since its so high, concepts that have to deal with faith are powerful when he uses it. It’s also the reason you can’t find him.”

Shet frowned a little. “I hate it when [Priest]s abuse the stat.”

“Well, that doesn’t count for Zed since you could as well say that he created the stat. All he has to do is believe well enough and hard enough and things happen. Only those with free will are completely immune. And you know how that is.”

The faith stats were always an annoying thing. Dorthna remembered getting into an altercation with the [Priest] once. When Melchizedek realized that there was no calming him down, the idiot had believed that the planet would kill itself along with everything in it except him.

“How far has the Order of Melchizedek spread?” he asked.

“Ninety percent of Existence as per my last check,” Shet answered.

Dorthna didn’t like the sound of that. “Is that in population or in planets?”

“Population,” Shet answered. “A ration of about two hundred thousand to one when it comes to followers to leaders.”

Dorthna wasn’t surprised. It was like that almost everywhere. The leaders were always far fewer than the followers.

“That’s good to know.” He sighed with the conclusion of the conversation. Like he had expected, he had gained nothing from it. “Oh, I almost forgot. Who made the request?”

“Atlas.”

Dorthna paused. That wasn’t right. “Isn’t he still powering… well, basically everything?”

“He is,” Shet agreed. “He sent an emissary.”

An Emissary? Atlas had no emissaries and no friends. It seemed Dorthna would have to look into some things. Firs, he would…

No, he dissuaded himself. You are not who you used to be. He looked at his open hand and flexed it. Not yet, at least.

It made him remember something else with a smile. “Tell me, what are those are the top like now that I’m gone?”

Shet chuckled. “At first they were happy when the angels finally got you.”

“Really?” Dorthna was shocked. “Even after I was weakened after the war.”

“You have no idea how greatly you are feared, No—Dorthna,” Shet corrected. “Even now, weakened as you are, it had still taken basically all of the heavenly hosts to seal you in heaven. Then you escaped and now they are all panicked. Tiamat wonders if you will finally come for her for looking to enslave the world of the [Dying Light].”

Dorthna considered it and shrugged. The world of the [Dying Light] was important to him in a way that didn’t truly matter. There was no point ruining the creature just for trying.

“Alright then, time for me to answer your question as to how the boy got here,” Dorthna said, switching subjects abruptly. “I’ll start with the kid. His name is Melmarc Lockwood and he’s an [August Intruder].”

Shet cocked his head to the side. “Isn’t he too young to be an [August Intruder]?”

“He is, but some self-centered Voidbeast met him at the wrong time and chose to speed up the process.”

Shet frowned. He was not a fan of the voidbeasts on account of their inability to possess emotions. However, everybody liked to underestimate their propensity for control.

“That does not explain how he got here,” Shet said.

“Said voidbeast was at some point banished here for doing things that it was not supposed to do.”

“And it got out, how?”

“Some connection to the boy, I’m guessing. Personally, I don’t think it’s very important. It’s not the first existential being to escape the void. As long as the failures,” he looked around at the things lurking in the darkness, “don’t find a way to escape, Existence will be alright.”

Shet looked around as well. All they saw was the darkness, but Dorthna knew that the boy could feel them.

“Then back to the boy,” he said. “I can understand the beast escaping through their connection, but only to an extent. The question is how he got here.”

“Pure mana.”

Shet frowned. “How has a child from an infant planet gotten his hands on enough pure mana to do that?”

“He didn’t get his hands on pure mana,” Dorthna explained. “He is pure mana. At least he’s becoming it.”

Shet paused. “Oh.”

Dorthna could see the wheels in the man’s head working, trying to figure out how pure mana had allowed Melmarc to break through the naturally existing barriers to find his way here. He also saw how Shet could not come to an answer he was in agreement with.

“So, I take it the he connected to this place somehow through his connection to the Voidbeast and the Voidbeast’s connection to this place,” Shet began in that voice he liked to use when he was trying to decipher reality.

“Veebee,” Dorthna corrected.

Shet blinked. “You named it? I thought you didn’t like them.”

“I didn’t, and I don’t.” Dorthna had not forgotten his hand on the door. “The kid named it.”

Shet’s head moved back, as if he had been physically struck by his surprise. “And it stuck?”

Dorthna nodded. “A young [Namer] protégé.”

“God no.” Shet ran a hand down his face in frustration. “We already have too many [Namer]s out in Existence causing all the trouble in the world. We definitely don’t need another one.”

“Oh, calm down,” Dorthna chuckled. “He’s a protégé, not a [Namer]. Personally, I don’t think he’ll have enough reasons to unlock the title.”

“He’s an [August Intruder],” Shet disagreed. “I’m sure he’ll find a way. Anyway, pure mana and a voidbeast connected directly to the void are not enough explanations. If they were, I’m sure the [Priest] and Jabari would’ve found this place long ago.”

Dorthna held up a finger. “One, Melchizedek is not looking for this place.” He raised another. “And two, if this place is built to be hidden away from God, then obviously, Jabari won’t be able to find it either because it would mean that it was built to be hidden away from him.”

“Can’t be the [Namer] thing, right?” Shet asked.

The question made Dorthna sigh. “You do realize that the whole [Namer] thing is your father’s fault, right? If he hadn’t gone around naming everything and just allowed everything to name itself, we wouldn’t have [Namer]s.”

Shet was already shaking his head. “Somehow I doubt that. You were the one that didn’t like how I was handling things and chose to name me.”

“Re-name you,” Dorthna corrected.

He could still remember how Shet had struggled with who or what he was supposed to be, torn between what his brothers were and what his parents had been and had been trying to become. So he’d taken pity on him.

Looking at the man in front of him now, he could confidently say that Shet had come a long way.

As if reading his mind, Shet smiled. “You know that was the first thing to ever happen to me? You, naming me.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Dorthna muttered. “All I did was complete you.”

“You named me the [First Man],” Shet said adamantly. “You recognized me as the first man. Not my father, me.”

“Your father was God’s creation trying to be a man,” Dorthna said, remembering Adam. “You struggled as he did because you only knew how to be the punishment that God gave him. And I just didn’t think you deserved all that struggle.”

“So you redefined what a man was. You remade me. Renamed me.”

And stepped upon the territory of God. When he did it, it was the first time he had noticed the attention of God focus on him. For he had taken God’s creation, God’s belonging, and remolded hit.

God had not liked it.

“You try to make it sound like something unimportant,” Shet added, “but you created the s—”

“You’re getting carried away, Shet,” Dorthna cut him short. “This place might be built to hide under God, but the boy has been here. It would not be far-fetched to assume that it was the working of God. He has already met Jabari, after all.”

Shet’s eyes widened. “At so young an age?”

“Things have happened in his life,” Dorthna answered absently.

“Do you think his ability to come here had something to do with the meeting?”

“Nope. Jabari does not play a part in this.”

“Then you know what does?”

“Yep. The boy carries a title that nobody else alive or dead carries.”

Shet’s brows furrowed. “A new title? What’s that?”

“The system sees the boy as my hope.”

“Oh.” Shet looked like he wanted to laugh. “That’s new.”

“And not inaccurate.”

“I see,” Shet mused. “That you would consider him to be your hope is interesting.”

“I have my reasons, and that is all I will say of it.” Dorthna frowned, not entirely happy with the conversation. “What he doesn’t know, and I will not tell him, is that possessing that title gives him something that nobody else has, something that has allowed him to come here.”

“And what is that?”

“My hope,” Dorthna said, voicing realizations that he had not liked when he had come to discover them long ago. “Should the system deem it, if he is strong enough and it work in accordance to my hopes, Melmarc Lockwood will have access to any and all things that I have access to.”

“Titles?” Shet asked.

Dorthna nodded. “Yes.”

“Class?”

“He’s already the second closest class to mine.”

“Even the Garden?”

Dorthna nodded. “Should he be strong enough.”

“Doesn’t that practically make him your successor?”

“I hope not,” Dorthna said, meaning it. “He’s not ready for that level of attention from God.”

Shet’s eyes went to the door immediately. “That’s why you let him open it, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Dorthna admitted.

“Why?”

“Because if he truly becomes my successor, if that is the path he ends up taking, then he will need to walk through this door by himself.” Dorthna looked at the door. “He will need to overcome the same fear by himself.”

Shet looked at the door through narrowed lids. “Why am I afraid of it? Why are we afraid of it?”

“Because you all still belong to God, and you have all—everything created and procreated—for all your lives, lived in the presence of God.”

“And?”

“And everything possesses a single fear that they cannot rise above partly because they are not aware of it and it does not exist.”

“What fear is that?” Shet asked.

Dorthna looked at the door and answered. “A place where there is no God.”

Then he closed it.

…

“So,” Ark said, hiding behind the building, squatting next to Melmarc as they watched the guards with the guns at the door. “how are we doing this?”

Melmarc didn’t like the excitement in his brother’s voice, but he understood it. Why? Because he was excited, too.

“You think we can take them?” Melmarc asked.

Ark scoffed. “Please, as long as we don’t get shot, we’ll be fine.”

“Alright then,” Melmarc sighed, then stepped out into the open under the light of the rising moon. “Try not to kill anybody.”

The guards saw him immediately.

“Hey! You!” a deep baritone called out. “You can’t be here!”

Ark leapt out from his hiding spot and darted around the corner. He took an arched path to the man. His companion saw him, panicked, and raised her gun.

Melmarc sighed. “And yet, here we are.”

[You have used skill Knowledge Is Power]