Chapter 48 - Proxy (Patreon)

I woke into that endless sky again, without the cage. Eve wasn’t here.

The air felt cool and very thin, like mountain breath. Every sound seemed to travel farther than it should, as if the world were hollowed out and waiting to be filled. I tested my footing and found no ground, only the idea of standing. My body allowed it because the place allowed it.

The place hadn't changed at all.

Except that what could only be considered a Goddess stood before me in this odd plane of reality. She was the opposite of Eve in every way. Eve looked like a mannequin carved from darkness, with a face void of features. This Proxy looked human, breathtaking, like the sun had stepped down from the heavens and tried on a body. Light seemed to originate from her, a steady radiance that illuminated a sunless world. It carried a gentle warmth that never quite reached heat, like standing near a hearth where the flames refused to flicker. For all I knew, she might as well have been what she appeared to be.

“Do not be nervous, child,” the being said. She settled in front of me. As she did, her height softened and her shape eased until she felt more approachable. We were eye‑level, yet her power pressed on the air, a polite weight. The brightness around her rang like a high note you could feel in your teeth.

I felt the need to bow, but I didn’t. My spine locked itself into stubbornness.

“Oh?” Proxy studied me with frank fascination. “You didn’t even flinch, let alone bow. You may have the strongest will of the existing Chosen. How fascinating.” She looked almost proud. “Well, the Gods are never wrong.”

“Aren’t you one of them?” I asked, finding my voice. It sounded smaller than I wanted, but then it steadied.

“And you’re speaking so soon. Asking questions. Amazing.” Surprise flickered across her face. “Most people are in awe of this place at first sight. You don’t seem that shocked.”

“Would being shocked be useful?” I asked bluntly.

“Hmmm.” Proxy held my gaze. “None of your kind has been able to reach an Epiphany since the Rule over your emotions was ordained, even with the exceptions added after.”

I was partially emotional, partially cold, suspended in the state I’d carried into this plane of reality. Yet her words and their implications stirred something sharp. “What Rule?”

“In a moment,” Proxy said kindly. “There is an order to these things. My apologies for speaking out of turn and creating confusion. I’ll answer your questions as they become relevant. Promise.”

She put me at ease instantly, which somehow made me sick and annoyed. Calm on command always felt like someone else’s hand on my throat.

“So hostile,” she noticed.

“I don’t trust you.”

“Then we should bridge the divide by giving gifts.” Proxy gestured at my hand. “Please, your thumb. Look at it.”

I did. What I saw didn’t surprise me, given the circumstances. A black band wrapped around each of my thumbs. 

“It’s a crude version of the Chosen branch of powers intended for this Field, but the Rules allow intervention even up to this level,” Proxy said. “As long as an exceptional individual can still become Chosen, even if the path is harder, Rules over this are allowed.”

There she goes speaking of these Rules again, I thought. If you keep casually mentioning them without explaining, that doesn’t help me.

I went to speak, frustrated, but Proxy raised a hand. She didn’t bother saying why. I already knew the answer: she would explain everything eventually. It felt like a lie, but she didn’t seem like someone I could argue with and win.

“What’s my ability?” I asked, looking back at my thumbs.

“Do you not want me to explain why you were Chosen first?”

“Do both.”

Proxy pursed her lips. “Your kind are very rude. Oberon was like this with me, too.”

I bit my tongue. “My apologies," I said, almost like a hiss. "Please, explain the Chosen process. I would greatly appreciate it."

“An individual must achieve two things to become a Chosen.” She held up a finger. “Earn white eyes.” A second finger. “Reach a mental and emotional breaking point, positive or negative, that sets someone on the path toward changing the world. Many cultures call it an Epiphany. It could also be considered an Enlightenment or an Oath.”

“There are many people with Epiphanies in the world, I assume. But they’d need white eyes to be Chosen, so I’m assuming the order doesn’t matter.”

“Correct. Three colors. Red: the individual, power, and will. Blue: the greater good, altruism. Yellow: those who don’t fit, balance, and drift. When all seats fill, a Shepard must be selected.” Her face darkened slightly. “Election is preferred. Supremacy in death is permitted.”

I stared at Proxy, that last statement tickling my mind. “What does that even mean?”

“I cannot answer that yet. We’ll wait for the others.”

I frowned. For a while, I didn’t speak. The back of my throat tasted like metal and cold. Then I asked, “What’s happening in my world while I’m here?”

“Do not worry. No harm will come to your body.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Proxy’s eyes narrowed slightly. But she answered anyway. “Time here moves slowly. By the time we’re done, mere minutes will have passed in your Field.”

“What is a Field? You keep dropping words like I should know them. Explain some of them. Explain that one, at least.”

“We are in the afterlife, child.” Proxy cast out her hands. The clouds around us whipped and peeled apart. Curtains of vapor rolled aside to reveal distances within distances: pale terraces, avenues of light, the suggestion of doorways cut into the sky itself. “There are many Fields created in this realm for those who have passed in their worlds of birth.”

I froze. A part of me had assumed I was in another realm, but the afterlife? It didn’t make sense. It also wasn’t the most immediate question I had.

“If this is the afterlife, what happens when we die here?” I whispered.

“Your energy is recycled into the Fields for use by those still living. You would call it mana.”

My eyes widened. I stared at Proxy, letting the shape of her words settle. I thought of Nigel. The idea of him turning into energy in someone's sword or spell, to be used in an instant of violence and never again, made me ill. But I couldn't dwell on that. Not when I had so many other questions that needed answering.

“And the Fields are…what’s the point of them?” I heard myself say. “Why must we struggle when we’re dead?”

“What is the purpose of life without struggle?” she returned. “But that is not the point of the Fields.” She tapped her chin. “They are used to make Gods, child.” 

“Gods,” I repeated slowly. “Make Gods.” 

“Yes. The challenges in these Fields determine which individuals are worthy of becoming Divine.” She regarded me as if measuring my outline against a stencil only she could see.

“And Chosen aren’t Gods,” I inferred. “They’re picked to potentially become Gods.” More and more questions filled my head until they overwhelmed me to the point I didn't care anymore. My heart sank. I felt defeated. My mind drifted back to what truly mattered. “I…can I go back?” I asked. “Even if time passes slowly here, I want, I need to be there for Nigel.”

“The boy is dead.” Proxy’s voice turned unusually cold and blunt. “Your presence in the Field will not change that, nor will it alleviate your grief. Every Chosen has experienced your degree of loss. Otherwise, they would never be Chosen. Your duty is to your future, not the past, however recent.”

Her words made me so angry that I had to hold myself back from lunging at her. It would not have been possible if half my feelings weren’t dulled. I clenched my hands until the thumb bands warmed under my skin.

“You have the right constitution and mana, and you have formed an Epiphany.” Proxy held out her hand. “It is enough for me to tap into the Gods’ strength as their envoy and mark your eyes with their blessing.”

Before I could speak, Proxy reached toward me. Her fingers tapped my forehead, slid past my skin, and entered my head.

Enormous power flooded into me. It roared like wind through a canyon. It smelled faintly of rain and hot stone. My vision whitened. My heart reached for it without permission.

And in an instant, it retracted.

Horror twisted Proxy’s face. Terrified, she created distance between us. “What are you?!”

Metal bars wrapped around us, rising with a sound like iron singing. The cage encased us in the trap I knew too well. The air cooled another few degrees. The light wavered as if embarrassed.

Proxy lurched as if something had stabbed her in the back. Two mannequin‑black fingers pushed out of her mouth, and then a whole hand. The skin around it rippled, turning smooth and glassy, then liquid.

“Finally.” Eve strolled out from behind Proxy. Her arm was buried halfway down Proxy’s throat, like she was working a puppet. “You did it,” Eve said to me, winking. “Knew you would.” Her attention flicked back to Proxy. “You’re mine, bitch.”

“Y‑you…” Proxy managed to squeak as Eve’s fingers moved through her head like skin turned to water. “How… dare… you…” The words warped as if the mouth no longer belonged to her.

“Lovely seeing you, Proxy.” Eve smiled. “Goodbye.”

Eve’s fingers slid deeper into Proxy’s head. Proxy jolted like she had been stabbed again. Then her face went blank, as if her consciousness had been sucked out of her. The radiance around her dimmed to ordinary light, and the realm seemed to exhale. 

Eve looked me over with open fascination. “Good job, Yen. Always knew you’d be the one to make it this far. The others never had a chance against you.”

“Others?” I asked. The word felt dry in my mouth, the air thin enough to make speech a little effortful.

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Eve tapped her free hand against her faceless forehead. Her other arm was still jammed into Proxy. “I snatched a few of you from death. But to be honest, you’re the only one who had any potential. Their backgrounds weren’t as, hmm, interesting as yours.”

“You took other souls bound for the afterlife and placed them in the Fields you wanted, memories intact.” I guess out loud. The words felt metallic, like biting a coin.

“Proxy has already told you so much, huh?” Eve shook Proxy’s head, and the vacant eyes rattled in the empty skull. “Bad girl.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why do this?” I gestured around us, the gesture dragging through the still air. “Why put me through so much suffering? For what?”

“Oh. For me, silly.” Eve said it like it was the simplest answer in the world. “Well, for us, in the end. Your life will improve greatly from what's happened. But I needed you to get an Epiphany. I fixed the mana requirement by giving you what I could scrounge from this place.” She flicked her gaze to the blank horizon. “All you needed was to feel something. Archdevils don’t until they love. And when they love, they feel so much more than the average person. And when Archdevils lose what made them feel, they go berserk, return to their version of normal, or, in the right circumstances, have an Epiphany.”

She described my life like a ledger. Columns, totals, red ink for pain, and black for usefulness. As if I hadn’t lived and struggled for twenty years. As if I hadn’t almost died dozens of times. As if my love were a joke. As if the things I felt were just obstacles to whatever it was she wanted for us and her hidden goals.

I wanted to kill her with every fiber of my being. The thought rose clean and hot, then seated itself where my calmer mind could keep it from spilling.

“That was a mean way of phrasing it, so sorry, but it’s best not to sugarcoat these things sometimes,” said Eve, as if reading my mind. “But first, let me change into something a little more proper.” Her blank face tilted toward Proxy’s. “I waited a long time for this outfit.”

Eve pressed her body into Proxy. The light dulled a shade and the air cooled, as if the sky had pulled a curtain over itself. A soft pressure touched my ears, and the world tipped a fraction to the left. The motion was seamless and too quick, a wrongness my mind refused to parse. Her outline passed through Proxy’s like a hand through water, and the water decided to keep the hand.

Suddenly, Proxy moved again. Thought returned to her eyes. She lifted a hand and smiled. Her entire demeanor shifted, posture loosening in ways that belonged to Eve. “Much better.” She turned in a slow circle and gestured at me. “How do I look?”

Eve had taken over Proxy’s body.

I was mortified by what I was seeing, and the questions came faster than I could sort them. At the same time, my mind clung to Nigel. I yearned to get back to him, to see his body, to mourn in person, away from this scattered sky. This didn’t involve me. I didn’t want it to. I wanted a peaceful, normal life that—

Did I want that? 

“Your emotions are all over the place. Let me stabilize you.” Eve was already reaching her fingers into my head before I could stop her. “This’ll be the first time you’ve felt normal in your entire life. Feel free to thank me after.”

Warmth pressed through bone. It was like a blanket drawn over a shivering mind. My grief eased. I didn’t feel cold or empty. I still had feelings, but they weren’t overwhelming. I was calm. My attachments to the world outside faded to a manageable distance, as if the horizon had stepped back a measured pace. I should have refused; I didn’t.

I could think and feel equally. Neither smothered the other. Breath came easier. The air didn’t feel so thin.

My heart hurt the way it was supposed to. I had lost a friend in front of me, because of me, but it didn’t drag me toward derangement. It didn’t make my soul, my mana, feel like they were on the verge of collapse. The ache sorted itself into a shape I could carry without dropping everything else.

I was sad. I was heartbroken. Nigel was dead.

But I was very aware of where I was, what was happening, and the implications it would have on the future.

I was a Chosen. Eve had taken over the being who told me that. I was back in the endless sky that started my life after death and gave me power. The place hummed like a distant wire. Every new chapter of my life began in these clouds.

I would mourn later.

For now, I needed to focus.

“I like that look,” said Eve, smiling with Proxy’s face. Seeing her expressions worn by another made the playfulness and sarcasm clearer, like a mask that finally fit. “Let’s talk. Ask your questions.”

“Who are you?” I asked first. “You plucked me from death, gave me power, and took over a Goddess.”

“Not a Goddess,” she corrected. “More like a program administrator. Hmm. You wouldn’t understand that reference.” She tapped her lip. “It’s going to be hard describing any of this with the technical terms I’m familiar with.” She paused, eyes lighting with an idea. “She’s like what Atticus is to Christopher.”

“Right. Of course you'd know them. You did say you monitored my life,” I muttered. “Fantastic.” A thin bitterness touched my tongue.

“If only I could feel what you did, too. It was more like watching from a distance.” Eve reached into the sky as if she could touch it, then drew back, giggling. The gesture stirred the light without moving air. “Prince Christopher loves you very much, from what I can tell. Much more controlling in bed than outside it.”

“I’ve felt a lot of pain, too.” My voice thinned around the word pain and then steadied.

“And a lot of joy. Good or bad, it’s all part of being human, which I miss very much.”

“You were human?”

“In a manner of speaking. And I’d like to get back to living, if you don’t mind. That’s the point of all this. You think I want to be trapped in this damned sky all the time?” Disgust twisted her face. Then her expression sharpened. Proxy’s borrowed body pulsed with light, a brief heartbeat of radiance. “Dammit. Running out of time. Okay, I need to finish before the gathering, so the Gods don’t kill us.”

“Uhhh—” The sound escaped me before a thought could form.

“Listen. You don’t have time to process this, but I can’t have you going in blind.” Eve slid her fingers into my head again, warmth pressing through bone. “Where we are: Purgatory. First level: Fields. Each Field is managed by a Proxy. That’s who I took over.” She did not pause. “You are a Chosen. They exist to shape and enforce order through Rules and ultimately pick and support a Shepard to conquer this Field and others. How many Chosen are there? Six per color. Red, blue, yellow. Eighteen in total.” Her voice clipped the numbers into the air like pins. "When all eighteen are filled, a Shepard seat opens on this Field. Either everyone assents to one leader, or the Chosen kill each other until one remains. The second way truly conquers the Field. I know from experience.” Eve smiled. “I was a Shepard once.”

It was a lot to take in. The words nailed themselves into place as if the space wanted them kept. Power thrummed through my head so intensely I couldn’t respond, though I wanted to. My fingers tingled. The thumb bands felt warm, then cooled.

“Let’s get your eyes changed so we can move this along, shall we? You’re the last, so you’re welcome.” She covered my eyes with her other hand, and the power within me surged hotter. “Red. Not surprising. I had red eyes too, at one point.” She paused, then smiled sadly. “People don’t deserve second chances. They don’t change unless you force them to. I know that all too well.”

For a moment, my body felt like it was exploding inside itself. Vision starbursted white. Sound thinned to a whistle. The feeling passed like a wave rolling off a reef.

Then Eve removed her hands.

I felt free. Not unbound, but correctly weighted, as if a strap had been tightened to fit.

“Congrats, my little Chosen.” Eve patted my head. “Eye colors. Such a stupid metric of power.” She looped a finger in a circle, drawing a faint ring of light that evaporated. “Primary colors take dominance. Secondary and tertiary colors scale mana between low and high. Black resembles the lowest scale of power, none, and white the highest, a blank canvas ready to be colored and sent toward Godhood.” She laughed. “Downright pretentious shit. But don’t worry.” She stepped close and patted both my shoulders. “We’re going to get rid of all this very, very soon.” She winked. “Ready?”

“How could I be ready when I don’t really know what’s going on? You’ve filled my head with too much crap.” The calm held, but irritation pressed at the edges.

“Like I said, you have no time to dwell on it.” She flicked my nose and paced a few steps with a grin. “Now that every spot has been filled, all the Chosen will be gathered here.” She cast her hands out. A massive, elegant triangular table with six chairs on each side formed in the middle of the space. A smaller one, just enough for one person on each side of the triangle, formed in the center. Symbols rippled along their surfaces, settling into steadiness as if ink had decided to be wood. “One person from each side will select a Rule to add to the world now that there are three more of you from each faction. There's no need for the others to agree. It's a terrible system with usually one winner. There will be a greater explanation later, so don't worry until then.”

“A Ru—”

“A Rule is what guides how mana is used in the world and how it affects people,” Eve said before I could ask. “Those bands on your fingers? Rule. The fact that there are only four elements someone can use? Rule. The weird restraint you’ve felt in the system of power, like you’re held back? A bunch of conflicting Rules.” She tilted her head, considering me as if measuring a doorframe. “The limits on codex storage, the ceilings on internal mana, the way certain styles behave when pushed past their intended thresholds. None of its natural. This wasn't the original Field the God of this place created. It's been mishapen by so many Rules in an attempt to hold power, we'll be doomed should real conflict break out. We're weak. Held back. Pathetic.” Her face darkened. “The emotional issues with archdevils? A Rule from the oldest yellow-eyed bastard, a Voiced named Zion. Spiteful dickhead. But it got you here, so I can’t complain too much.”

“You’re saying this Chosen Zion made it so I couldn’t feel?” The calm let the question stand without shaking.

“And so that they feel more when they love, yes. It was a Rule he had one of his other yellow‑eyed freaks form for him during the last conference. Zion is the leader of the Voiced. They have yellow eyes. Oberon, for all intents and purposes, is an archdevil who leads the red‑eyed faction. That’s your guy. And a man named Ezekiel leads the blue‑eyed humanitarian do‑nothings who spread love, joy, and peace but do nothing of substance for anyone. They’re good at surviving, I’ll give them that.” Eve’s voice sharpened; whatever history she had with them tasted real. She glanced at the forming tables, satisfied by their symmetry.

“How did you become a Shepard through all that?”

“Hmm?” Eve looked at me.

“You said everyone needed to die or pick one. I’m assuming they picked you.”

“They did.”

“Why?”

“The Chosen process resets when a Shepard dies. There have been a lot of Shepards in this Field.” She smiled, sweet as poison. The light around Proxy’s skin glowed a fraction brighter. “You’ll be the last.”

“What do you—”

“It’s starting.”

Sound returned first, a soft strike like a bell touched without a mallet. I was suddenly seated at the small table, facing two other individuals, one with yellow eyes and one with blue. The chairs were smooth and cool, not wood, not stone—something that remembered both. Behind each of us stood larger triangular tables with six people. Everyone with red eyes was behind me, and it was the same for the yellow‑ and blue‑eyed individuals. The three tables enclosed us in a tight triangle, edges meeting with mathematical precision. Color bled faintly from each group: a red warmth at my back, a blue calm to my right, a yellow shimmer to my left.

“Welcome, all!” Eve’s voice boomed overhead.

I looked up.

She floated above us, sunlike mana radiating from her. The light coming off her was warm without heat, bright without glare. She swept her gaze across the room, hiding her feelings, then lingered on me at the end. “May the gathering of the Chosen commence.”