NOVEL NEXT Chapter 14 - Unburden
I am cherub number 48; it is a cherub's duty to attend her highness and the other high gods. There is no rest for us until we transcend.
An announcement for her grace, Serilia, is called over the Tannoy.
"Your presence is requested in The Monitoring Room,"
Serilia wasn't roused by the chiming going off, and with fear in my heart, I gently tried to wake her.
"Your grace, someone has summoned you," I whispered.
Snap
The noise echoed in her Godroom.
I am cherub number forty-nine, and I will try my best not to be erased, unlike my predecessors. Entering the Godroom and presenting Serilia with her evening gown. She demanded I speak, and I gently replied, "Allow me to carry this for you on your brief trip to The Monitoring Room, Your Grace."
"It's the weekend, what fool is operating the monitoring on a Sunday evening!? I'll ERASE THEM if they have wasted my time hee-hee".
She did not notice my words, but I took it as a sign that she no longer allowed me to speak, for I should know better.
I placed the gown upon her, and with a wave of her hand, we were in The Monitoring Room.
"Your grace," bowed the G.I.T. Phahl. "Forgive me for disturbing you on your day of rest, but I thought you may want to see this for yourself,"
"I'm in no mood; this better be worth my time," Her words rumbled the room from annoyance at being disturbed.
"I assure your grace, it is. Please look at the monitor for MT there appears to be trouble brewing between the more colonial types of the world. And we can't seem to keep track of a group that's seemingly able to avoid our monitoring, likewise, your person of interest, there was a moment briefly where we could see him"
"And then you couldn't?" she interjected.
Nodding Phahl said, "Indeed, Your Grace, his party seems to have acquired a new addition, a small child, and they have each gained several very good quality items for seemingly no good reason; this Lord Broekslang seemed to give them it all, willingly, and within a day."
"This is probably just a glitch, so have the heavenly tech team check it. In the meantime, punish them in pass green or whatever that fucking place is called, it's been a while since I've tormented the bastard…In fact!" Serilia threw Phahl across the room and shouted.
"I'LL DO IT MYSELF."
Serilia turned the difficulty dial from 1/10 to 3/10 on the difficulty scale. Now the dungeon has changed, so both the final path and the dungeon boss are different.
"So sorry for disturbing your heavenly self," said Phahl with tears in his eyes. Serilia had already waved her hand and returned to her quarters.
Crushing the poor cherub but not ending its life. It heard her mumble "Was this … no…couldn't be one of your lots, you don't have the authority to interfere… DEATH!" she screamed out shaking the heavenly realm, and pulling a beautifully well-groomed butler with blonde flowing locks you could die for, wearing a suit that could only exist in such an ethereal place…Yet it was worn by a skeleton, down from the clouds above.
The cherub was afraid, death was rare to see in person. He was employed to the accommodation beyond our realm, or 'Tabor' for short, and so answered only to Serilia or the seven, having no need to be here.
"Has there been any activity in the retirement realm"? The skeleton stood there emotionless, expressionless, and eventually shook his head to say no.
"Are you sure?" He gave her a thumbs up and she bid him to leave immediately. She returned to her bed and lay on it, grabbing her eye mask she clicked the light off with her left hand then clicked to end mine with her right.
***
Lucy sank to her knees and huffed, sweating profusely to the point that it was visible through her clothing. "You did good Lucy well done you saved our hides here" said Rhua.
Lucy, her breathing heavy, said "T-t-thanks."
Rhua threw some soothing stamps at me, and I eventually had the energy to stand up again, but Wardi and Horace were still out.
"Despite the fighting, it ain't nightfall yet, we still got to get a camp set up, I'll take Horace you take Wardi, Lucy here, drink this Rejuver Joos, catch up with us when you're ready"
She drank the drink before Rhua even finished the sentence, which was understandable that was intense for someone not using any enhancing potions beforehand and unleashing a very powerful Art.
It had almost turned nighttime by the time we made it to our destination, we had made it to a good camping spot just off the path. Horace had woken up just before we got there and was well enough to function. He used a support shell to set up a stealth area for protection, and Rhua used a fortifying barrier in combination with a scroll from her inventory.
I set up the pop-up magi tent I paid a small fortune for, but it's worth it, a pop-up magi tent that builds itself in minutes and has some decent luxuries needed for us to sleep in, like a comfy bed and a shower that drains off without any plumbing somehow.
I'm not going to question it, and neither should you. Either way, don't mind if I do! I placed Wardi into a bed as he still hadn't woken up yet.
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"I get why they call it Tumbles Road… It's because people die here, isn't it, and they just use a more pleasant name to hide that fact," Lucy's sad tones expressed the heavy heart she now carried inside herself.
"Yeah, it is," Rhua replied, not wanting to downplay the day. "I didn't think we'd be having to kill today, but this is what the world can be like… It's ruthless sometimes. If you hadn't done what you did, I don't think any of us would still be here though, Lucy."
"You protect me! Lucy," Silana said, as she tugged at Lucy's arm, I was so scared; you were brave, not like me!" she followed up with. Lucy was too out of it to notice. Wardi stocked up on instant meals, and he also got hold of a cooking appliance for on the road. The G&S chef Mike tool, which I used to cook food with, "Come and sit down, everyone."
It was good that a stealth shell was up. The noise these things make when you stab into instant meals is a little bit alarming, pop-pop-pop, pop-pop-pop, if sounds could kill, I thought after placing the food in and setting the timer.
"If it ain't nuked, it ain't good," it chimed as it finished.
"Eat up, then let's get to bed, we need to recover as much as possible, green top can still get ya good if you're not careful." Said Rhua.
"Rather that, than another event like the previous one so soon, everything hurts," groaned Wardi from his room in the tent.
"Quiet you, you're spoiling the mood." I joked
Lucy broke into a smile, and Rhua threw a mushy tammaro at me from her meal, causing Horace to stop laughing.
"Hey, don't waste good food! It doesn't grow on trees that easily!" She gave me a stern look and said, "It's not good food and yes it does grow on trees you moron."
"Hey, contentment and harmony, the kids are over there," I joked further, not before she attempted to throw another before shaking her head and laughing.
"Thanks for trying to lighten the mood, normie". "Ok, dear. You're welcome," Zing-zing!
As each of us finished, one by one, we went to bed in the tent. The evening's events really made us sleepy.
I started dreaming. A dark, long room, wrought together with silver chains and aged lumber.
"There is dim light, for only the dark lives here," A voice whispered.
An aura is filling it with the deepest hues of ethereal green and black shimmers. This one was imbued with only the darkest of curses, one to bring a pain never meant for mere mortals. I stand in the furthest row back from the altar at the end of the room, my robe is the deepest black and feels wicked.
Standing in rows of five, and there are six rows of seats. All of us are wearing robes that look increasingly valuable, more powerful the closer they were to the alter. The deity they worship is unfamiliar to me, yet it feels as if it were in the room with us now, it would bring nothing but brutal and decrepit of evil.
Two individuals vastly different appeared at the altar without me noticing. Is this happening now, I thought? Has it already, or is it going to? I just don't get it… I thought more in my head.
The woman wore black Nihu-looking attire from our old world, with a distinctively blue katana and a crimson red ribbon tying it together. A man stood next to her wearing armour that was nothing like I'd seen in the world so far, black, and mechanical and a lethal golden energy appeared to rotate around it almost as if it were self-aware.
"As the last flake falls," they said together, the voices in the room repeated it loudly
"AS THE LAST FLAKE FALLS!"
"So too, will the ashes of her chosen" Said a sharply dressed stranger suddenly appearing beside me, a scar upon his cheek was the only thing I noticed before he turned to me, face distorted placing his hand on my shoulder kicking me from my sleep causing me to wake up in panic gasp, huff damn, this is the 2nd time now.
"DRITT," I said aloud, sitting up from the panic, the beads of sweat coming down my face were flowing fast. Rhua came in, disturbed by the noise,
"You ok? Because you don't look it right now, and the loud banging gave me a jump I thought we were getting attacked," I waved her over and she walked over to me.
Pulling out a muter sphere-ultralite from my inventory, I threw it up in the air, and a small, vaguely green mist enveloped us.
"Remember, a little while ago, you had to rush and aid me?"
"Yeah, what about it?" she said curiously.
"My vision separated, I could see you all with my left eye, trying to help, and in my right, I was in the realm of gods…I think."
"Really!? Rhua replied, shocked by the words and mouth gaping. She was more concerned for me now than before.
"Yeah… and it seemed like I was one of the gods or at least someone close to being that high up. I witnessed an important meeting about what happened with our worlds, Serilia and the seven attended it. It seemed that things were happening upstairs beyond their control, and she was furious about it." I said before, pausing to catch my breath and continuing.
"And after the meeting I seemed to follow another figure they called a git, a god in training, he had a group of followers himself that seemed to believe in a different god altogether, I think they said the name Kaiser, then, In the dream or nightmare, can't tell which if I'm honest, there was a dangerous looking group of people, REALLY dangerous. The types that would conquer and end the world just because it's fun, and they worshipped something evil, something that should probably never see the light of day."
Shaking from my nightmare, I continued, "The scariest thing about the whole thing was at the end, one of the people appeared to know I was there, looked me dead in the eyes - but I couldn't see his face except for a small heavy-set scar on the lower side of his face. Then I was pushed out by him, it's why I woke up screaming," I finished gasping heavily for air.
"You should have said something…, that's scary and not a good thing to hold on to," she whispered.
"With everything that has been happening lately, do we need to be scared of anything else? It could be something or nothing, could even be the gods themselves playing around or some monster with illusionary abilities, plenty of things come out at night after all." I said to her trying to dismiss the topic a little.
"Honestly, this year has me scared; the negativity has far outweighed the positives. Baroness Areya is hell bent on colonisation, bandits are more frequent, and we had a tough encounter with that group just now, AND let's not forget what happened in Et-Navn…and Silana too, who is she and why is she here? Said Rhua, staring off into the distance.
"The former are manageable, the latter I'd say is a one-off, it better be anyway, we barely survived even going beyond our limits like we did… I never want to face a target like it again. As for Silana, you guys know her ever so slightly more than I, which in itself is not a lot, but you probably agree, there's no bad energy about her, Rhua." I followed up by saying, "I think her being here was no accident, yet almost certainly nonconsensual, dragged to another world to get lost on adventures and hanging with a bunch of 30-somethings, plus a guy with a cooked noggin and a girl that's more outfit than person.
"I've seen that show in multiple different variations, if only it was a truck that took out the world and we also ended up with some cute teddy bear looking thing following us around," Rhua cracked a smile at her humour.
"There's a mystery we need to figure out along the way" She followed up returning to the topic at hand.
"Aye, sorry for waking you, I'm going to try and sleep again," though I doubt I will, I thought to myself. We smiled and nodded at each other and returned to our beds. Still thinking about him, that warped face is practically tattooed onto the back of my eyelids jeez what a presence, good luck who ever faces that one I thought.