NOVEL NEXT Chapter 31: A Small Cub in a Very, Very Big Universe
“Uh…” Dominic felt rather blind-sided. While he and his father had nominally been Christian, it’s not really something he’d paid a huge amount of attention to. His father had gone to church at least once a month and when he was younger he’d been obliged to go along. Sunday school had been fun when he was six, and he’d really enjoyed all the stories about guys getting eaten by whales, men making the walls of cities collapse by blowing horns, and small guys taking on giants with only a sling.
By the time he was twelve, however, it had kind of lost its cool factor and he’d started objecting to losing his Sunday morning lie-in to church. His father hadn’t pushed and so that was the end of it all.
As for whether he believed that God existed? Well, he’d just kind of accepted that yes He did, but hadn’t given any real thought to what that might mean in the last ten years. Frankly, Dominic had just been living his life, unbothered by any theological concerns. But now he was face to face with a self-proclaimed ‘goddess’ who was asking him to follow her.
“What does that even mean?” he asked, both stalling for time and genuinely curious. His first instinct was to automatically refuse – he was pretty sure that it would be rather heretical if the Christian God, actually did exist. And besides, what good did religion ever do on Earth? Look at the crusades.
Selessa pushed herself to her feet and then her form blurred, like she was levelling up. This time, that wasn’t the reason, though. When the blurring finished, she straightened and Dominic saw that she’d taken a humanoid form that was just a little taller than him. Her muzzle, four eyes, and round leonine ears still remained, but her front paws had become hands, and her torso had shortened, her legs lengthening instead. Flickering movement from behind her proved that her tails were still there though. She was technically naked, but just as furry as before, so nothing was actually revealed.
She took a few steps forwards, her gait as liquid as it had been in her four-pawed form.
“I never understand why you bi-pedals like walking on two paws,” she murmured as she approached him. Dominic had to fight not to take a step back – her form might have changed, but the sense of an immense feline form towering over him hadn’t disappeared. “It’s just so unsteady.”
“Then why take it?” Dominic couldn’t help asking. “You could have stayed in the other shape. I wouldn’t have minded.” Perhaps once it would have made him underestimate her, but after his experience as a lion, and with the hyena matriarch, Sekhmet and the other lionesses, he wouldn’t be underestimating what a creature who was obviously far higher-level than him could do – ‘goddess’ or not. Especially when she was big enough to step on him.
She just gave him an enigmatic smile.
“Now, you asked what it means to be my follower,” she says, briskly returning to the subject at hand. “Since you’re on a newly-integrated world, I have to assume that you know nothing of deities.” She paused for a moment, as if to let him interject. He didn’t, so she just continued. “I will not bore you with all the details that are not relevant to you at your low tier, but once someone succeeds in passing the tier six bottleneck and becomes a deity, Prey Points and the like are no longer relevant. Instead, we make progress from the number, quality, and devotion of our followers.
“I won’t hide the fact that I’m a fairly new goddess – I only ascended a couple hundred of your years ago. As a result, I have not fully established my following, which is why I have appeared to you now instead of sending a messenger. Why am I telling you all this? Because it means that though I am interested in having you join my following, I am quite limited in the boons I could offer you to do so. However, if you agree to join me, I will do what I can to help you – that’s the benefit of being part of a small cult: more personal interest from the goddess.”
Dominic hesitated, something about her words making him uneasy. He wasn’t quite sure why: she wasn’t anything like that snake-oil salesman of a kesh. If anything, she seemed pretty straight-talking, which Dominic appreciated. There was no mystical BS, no talking about rewards received after death or whatever. Instead, he had to guess that these ‘boons’ might be interesting.
“What kind of boons are we talking about here?” he asked, his eyes narrowed, pushing his qualms to the side for a moment. Selessa shrugged, the movement fluid.
“I can offer a number of things. From personal boons such as increasing a certain aspect of yourself, or giving you a new Ability – within reason – to blessing your pride or your settlement.”
“My settlement?” Dominic jumped on that word.
“You have just taken a Place of Power. Normally the next step for a sapient race is to build a settlement around it,” the goddess answered nonchalantly. “It’s not obligatory, of course, but it would give you a definite head start on breaking through to Tier three. And then there’s the fact that the Place of Power has features which only apply when it’s the centre of a settlement – regardless of what form that takes.”
Dominic shook his head, not so much in negation as in the feeling of being overwhelmed. There were so many questions he had, just from what she’d said so far.
“I’m missing so much knowledge,” he muttered to himself, barely realising he was speaking out loud.
“I could help with that too,” Selessa said, moving just a little closer to him. He looked up to see her standing a bare few inches away from his nose. Dominic took a step back, not comfortable with her that close.
“What do you mean?” he asked once he’d made a bit of space between them.
“An alternative boon is that of knowledge. I could offer you the answer to a small number of questions in return for you becoming a follower.”
That would be extremely helpful, Dominic thought to himself, then felt suspicion creep up on him. Too helpful, perhaps. He still hadn’t managed to work out what was making him feel uneasy before.
“You’ve said what I get out of it, but you haven’t given much information on why you want me, apart from something vague about needing followers to progress as a goddess,” he stated with his brow slightly furrowed. The goddess shrugged again.
“Do I need more reason? You are a sapient creature who has so recently come into control of a Place of Power. I have a particular interest in leaders.”
Dominic thought that over carefully, still feeling like he was missing something. So the goddess needed more followers, and she was inviting him to join, yet that didn’t seem like the whole of it. Then a thought struck him.
“Wait, if I become your follower, what would that mean for my pride? Or my ‘settlement’?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
A rumble came from the goddess in front of him. He thought for a moment that she was growling, but instead he realised that she was purring. Or maybe laughing.
“Clever,” she praised. “You are right – I am particularly interested in you because of your position as leader. A settlement can be dedicated to a particular deity as much as an individual can be, benefitting both.”
That made more sense now – the goddess was trying to get a two-for-one deal here. She wanted to both convert Dominic himself, and get his ‘settlement’ thrown in. Some of his discomfort vanished with the realisation, but not all of it.
“Time is almost up,” warned Selessa. “What is your answer?”
“If I decided to follow you, what would be my obligations afterwards?” Dominic asked bluntly. It might have been years since he’d gone to church, but he still remembered the collection plate that was passed around, and the rota for decorating the church and bringing the coffee and cake for after the service. Not particularly onerous duties, perhaps, but they had existed.
“Few. A quest here, a conversion there, the general mission of expanding my cult and honouring me, etcetera. I don’t require any sacrifices, though as a hunter goddess, dedicating kills to me might earn my favour, depending on the kill. Most of these are optional, though by doing them you could earn yourself more boons.”
“And if I decide to stop following you?” the human asked next, suspecting that it wouldn’t be as simple as just leaving the church.
“Then you’d earn my displeasure, and lose whatever enduring boons you have earned from me. If you are particularly rude or traitorous about it, I might declare Holy Wrath against you, meaning that any of my existing followers would try to kill you on sight.”
Lovely, thought Dominic with distaste. Hadn’t he just been thinking that religions were no good for the Earth?
“Yeah, OK, no thanks then,” he answered the goddess, crossing his arms tighter across his chest and glaring at her. “Now let me out of here.” Selessa’s eyes narrowed.
“Not so fast. Are you sure that you wish to pass up the benefits of being my follower so easily?”
“So easily?” Dominic asked incredulously. “You’ve just said that if I choose to leave your ‘cult’, you’ll get your existing followers to kill me! Why would I want to join you after hearing that?” Not to mention that ‘cult’ had so many lovely connotations.
“That would only be if when you left, you joined an enemy and gave them secrets about my following, or if you left in a way that severely hurt my other devotees,” Selessa explained. “It wouldn’t be if you just chose one day to leave my service, no hard feelings.” Dominic refused to bend.
“I don’t like the idea that it’s even an option.”
“Not even for knowledge about how to combine Abilities?” she asked tantalisingly. “Or about how to use your new Place of Power effectively? Besides, this Place of Power is sponsored by a deity, by me. That means you will only get a fraction of its use if you are not
sworn to me.”Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“You never said anything about that earlier.”
Selessa shrugged.
“I did not think that that would be the aspect which either convinced or didn’t convince you. Look, let us be straight here. There are thousands, even millions of gods. Despite how difficult it is to reach the peak, the universe is vast enough that a handful reach it every decade or so. And once we’ve reached divinity, we’re rather hard to kill. What I’m saying is that you’re going to come into contact with other gods. And then you’re going to see that I’m on the lax side when it comes to being a deity.
“Threatening you with my Wrath if you go and sell my secrets to an enemy? That’s nothing. I know several deities who would Smite their followers just for using their name in vain, or for not bowing low enough at their altars.”
“You’re really not convincing me on the following a god front,” Dominic remarked, pushing the thought to one side about whether the Christian God actually existed and was one of these guys or whether He was a different kettle of fish completely. Or maybe never existed at all except in the imaginations of humanity.
Selessa sighed.
“What I’m trying to say is that if you’re going to follow a deity, I really am your best bet. And the vast majority of beings in the multiverse who can follow a deity, do so because of the benefits it offers.”
“Saying you’re the best in what’s increasingly sounding like a bad lot really isn’t very convincing,” Dominic returned. It was odd, but he no longer felt like he was at the foot of a massive feline, about to be stepped on. The aura was still there, but it was far less overwhelming. Was it because he’d got used to it or because he was no longer impressed with the originator of it?
The humanoid feline groaned and rubbed at her forehead with one hand.
“Of all the sapients I had to get, it would be a human.” Dominic eyed her, abruptly amused. She just sounded so long-suffering – a bit like his aunt after he’d come into the house from the garden absolutely covered in mud. “Look,” she said to him next, piercing him with her red eyes. “I need you, I won’t hide it. You and your settlement could significantly help me. But you need me too. You need the knowledge I can offer you, the boons I could give you. You’re a small cub in a very, very big universe. You don’t even know the barest fraction of the threats which await you, both on your planet and beyond. I can help you with that.”
Dominic studied her. She looked completely honest about it, and even his persistent unease disappeared briefly. Besides, it was true – he knew nothing about this new world. He was continually being surprised by new aspects of it, and having to make decisions with nothing but theories directing them. But was it worth entangling himself with a ‘cult’? It even sounded like a bad idea from that word alone.
