Six Souls [Isekai/LitRPG] [B1&2 complete, B3 in progress]

Faye slipped her dress from her shoulders and turned away from me to walk towards our bed, lying down on her side and propping her chin on one hand. The light from the smoke hole in the yurt, mixed with the flickers from the central fire, washed over her pale skin, highlighting every curve and casting seductive shadows that accentuated her beauty.

"Come to bed, Raymond," she said softly, a faint longing in her voice.

We were in my tent, and I was dressed in a simple tunic that hung down to the middle of my thighs. I stepped forward without thinking, one hand reaching out towards her, then I stopped.

"You're not her. Stop wearing her face," I ground out as rage flooded through me and my aura spread out to slice away at the conjured surroundings. Felt split, the fire erupted in sparks as the logs and sticks were chopped apart, as my anger made itself plain.

The world shifted. Gentle sunlight fell around me, and I was wearing the clothes I'd had on when I touched the god of love's Sources. A warm breeze ruffled my mullet at the back, and the leaves above me threw gently moving shadows at my feet. An apple orchard, the trees heavy with golden fruit, and where Faye had been the androgyne beauty of the Aphrodite I knew from before.

"You're no fun. I hate people who are genuinely in love, it's like I've already won and the game loses its charm," Aphrodite said from the couch they were stretched out on. "Most of my tricks are pointless when I'm already inside someone's soul."

I checked my body, running through it with my aura, but I found no trace of the alien authority that surrounded me. I reached out with my divine senses and felt it. Longing, lust, desire and regret permeated the air.

"I bet there aren't any dark places on Urth in your eyes," I muttered, conjuring a chair from shadows and sitting down slowly, not taking my eyes off the god before me.

"The deep deserts where there is no life beyond bacteria are gloomy to me, Raymond. But wherever there are people is a bright place. The urge to bond and breed burns brightly in my senses, even among the lower forms of life."

"I have your champion."

"And yet you did not kill him and take his power. You could have claimed his magic or earned a boon from me. Imagine all your descendants being blessed by me. Every heart would bend to their will."

"I don't need that kind of power, and I wouldn't want them to be warped by it. Do you ever feel that you aren't worthy of the adoration? If it's just a product of your power, isn't it false?"

A tinkling laugh echoed out, and the trees swayed as the breeze picked up for a moment. "You, who've fallen in love with an illusion, a construct we made for our own entertainment, would question whether the giver or the receiver of love needs to be real?"

"Faye is real."

"As is your son, whom you barely dare to think about for fear of losing him. But they are constructs nonetheless, little brother. Your friends are figments of our imagination, but they love you as well. What are you going to do with Jeremy?"

I shifted in my seat, keeping my aura pulled in close around me. Aphrodite held out a hand, and an apple, glowing like a miniature yellow sun, dropped from the tree above and landed in their palm. They took a delicate bite, a dribble of juice running from the corner of their mouth was caught with a long tongue.

"You already know."

"Not since your partial ascension. Your mind is no longer open to us. It's made the last few months rather exciting."

"If necessary, he dies. If not, he stays in stasis forever."

"You want to make your new world permanent?"

"Yes. For Faye, my boy, and my friends."

"Love indeed. You would disrupt the agreed order, make liars of all the gods, break the rules of the game, all for your wife?"

I nodded slowly. "I never got any promises from a god that they didn't break."

"Tsk. That is hardly true. Even the story Poseidon told you to lure you to Mortimer's home so you could be included in the game was mostly true. Mortimer died that night, after all."

"She didn't need me to do it. That was a lie," I snapped. Poseidon would get what was coming to her.

"And if she hadn't told you that 'lie'? Where would you be now? Existing as a non-entity in London, Singapore or Berlin. Going where the job sent you to commit murder, then disappearing back into your cloak of mundanity. Unknown outside of murderous gangsters, a life unlived in the service of death, a man unloved." They threw the core behind them, and it vanished as it reached the zenith of its arc.

"Poseidon is going to pay for what she did to me."

"Oh, no doubt, dear sibling. But she brought you to me, so I must be grateful for that, at least. Now, you're alive. There are people and ideas that you love more than your precious professionalism and the wealth your calling brought to you." Aphrodite leaned back and let an arm dangle in front of the couch, idly swinging it back and forth.

"I never loved the money. It was the job. Doing it right mattered."

"And so you'll 'do it right' to her, will you?" A short, lusty laugh made the shadows dance as the trees swayed. "Jeremy was a disappointment in the end. I think the only one of us who didn't draw a dud was Aresk. And perhaps Thoth, although that remains to be settled. What are you planning to do with my champion?" Their voice became cold and commanding at the end.

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"The storage stone he's trapped in will be… lost amid thousands just like it. Forever."

Aphrodite giggled. "You truly were Possie's greatest mistake! No wonder she hates you so."

"The feeling is mutual." I smiled grimly at the god. "The question is, what am I going to do with your Source? I don't need the control of the peasants, dragging them out of their homes to die in the cold."

"Winter is unusually harsh this year. Your doing?"

"Poseidon will be weakened."

"So yes. Interesting. Who else have you brought to your side?"

"Aresk, Moranna, perhaps the Mother. Aresk mentioned Hermes."

"The old tactician will have more than that lined up with him if he wants a proper divine battle. He may not be including you in all his plans, young one. And Hermes… interesting."

I reached out with my aura and sliced the stem of an apple above me. The golden fruit fell, and I snatched it from the air. It was delicious. I didn't bite into it, but I knew how it would taste. Juicy and firm, sweetness perfected. I invaded it with my aura carefully, surrounding the essence of this god and drawing it into my palm.

The fruit withered, dessicating in my palm, and the power of lust and jealousy and consummation flooded into me. That was their name. Not Lust or Love: Consummation. The achievement of satisfaction. The moment when desire meets its needful thing.

I surrounded it with invisible knives, guiding the stolen power through my body. Cells merged and separated, mitosis happening far too fast. My flesh glowed faintly gold as the bulb of power was dragged across my chest and added to the growing meld in the Source of the Cycle.

"So that explains Hermes," Aphrodite muttered.

"Join us."

"You want me? What is it that you desire?" They smiled lasciviously.

"I will punish Poseidon, and Aresk wants a war that he's going to get. Beyond that, there is nothing between us."

"Nothing?" They sighed. "So it seems. Do not kill my champion, and gift my Source to someone of my choosing. Those are my conditions."

"To join me, or to stay out of what's coming?"

"To side with you. Ocean and I have feuded in the past. Her capriciousness infringes on my authority, and my power touches everything that lives, even her precious creatures of the deep."

"What does your Source do, and who do you want me to give it to?"

"Why, give it to your lady love, of course. Her beauty will become even more breathtaking, and all the blessings that come from that." They smirked at me. "Fertility, in a limited sense, is closely tied to me, as is control."

"And manipulation," I replied. They nodded happily.

"Of course. She will be able to send the peasants home, inflame the passions of those under her power or opposed to her. She would have my blessing."

"And you will side with us in the war?"

"Yes."

"I will offer the Source to Faye. If she says no, I will not force the issue."

"Reasonable."

"It's been a pleasure," I said as I stood, and my chair dissolved into shadowy smoke.

"Oh, it has indeed. Sometimes, being denied the thing you want can move you to great deeds, and I can see your heart is wholly owned by another. I hate romantics as much as I adore them as well. I will act in your interests against Poseidon and her allies."

I looked down at them, receiving a lazy wave of a hand in reply.

"Thank you, sibling." I tore open a portal back to reality and stepped through to the chamber containing the Source. Where there had been two glowing pearls earlier, a hairclip sat on the chaise longue.

Delicate silver wires, with a green and a pink pearl merging together like cream on coffee, mounted in the centre, remained from the pair of antagonistic Sources I had seen before. I slipped it into a belt pouch and opened a portal. It was time to go back to where I had begun.

I stepped out and saw a familiar sight in a new light. When I had first arrived in this world, the rolling hills before me had been lush and verdant. Behind me, a familiar cave opened into the hillside. The marks of my fires further in, when I had moved deeper into the darkness to escape the rain, still showed as sooty stains on the barren rock.

The bodies of the men I'd killed had been removed. Hakubin must have sent some of the Areskyn to give his friends and him a burial. Grass had grown up across the area in front of my first home on Urth, now buried under snow, but a few yellow stalks poked out from the deep slush.

I stomped over. I knew the place perfectly, like I had never left. I headed deep into the cave, summoned light from an enchanted stone, and found the scorch marks left by Wilson's pyre. A few bones still poked out of the ash, and I crouched to stare at them for a long time.

I don't know what I felt in that timeless moment. I wasn't the man I had been back then. A vile-bear would pose no more threat to me now than a mouse would to a tiger. I headed out and paused at the slight depression that was all that remained of my failed attempt to cure the bear hide. I'd been so clueless.

Being abandoned out here in the wilderness on my own had set me back so far. While the others had all dropped in with easy access to Souls and ways to gain them that didn't involve slaughter, I'd been killing mice and squirrels and rabbits. My fists clenched. Poseidon owed me.

I made my way through the trees towards the river where I had gathered clay to make my pots, and filled my waterskins in those first few days. Some of the old animal runs were present, the ones I'd laid my traps in for food and Souls. A few had vanished, maybe only hidden in the deep snow, but perhaps abandoned.

The skeletal trees reached up around me, and I could see down the slope to the frozen river. I followed the familiar trail, passing the spot where I had dropped the deer I'd killed with Wilson, when I heard his yelp as the Koryolis killed him. I floundered for a moment… Graben. That had been his name. A fine young man, brave and honourable by the standards of his people.

I arrived on the snow-covered banks of the river. I'd seen a vile-stag across the water, but had no way to kill it or ferry the meat back across what had been a fast-flowing river at that time. Its horns had been damn near as tall as I was on top of its head.

I pulled out the stone that now housed Jeremy, the fourth of my opponents exiled from Earth for the amusement of the gods. I weighed the bead of rock in my palm, tossing it lightly into the air and catching it several times.

I cast Wildfire, and the almost invisible flames spread out around me, clearing away the snow; it melted and formed pools on top of the frozen ground that flashed into steam as the fire didn't die. Morana had really gone to town this year. I moved from one glowing piece of slate to the next, the heat from the stone barely registering in my mind, and I flipped over one of the larger pieces.

It was about six feet long and bulged beneath, leaving a deep hole in the mud. The top had been worn smooth by spring floods washing over it, but the part that had been buried was lumpy and angular.

"You'll stay here forever, Jeremy, an anchor to keep my world alive. It seems a harsh way to go out, I guess. I could moralise about what a shit head you are, or list off your faults, but what's the point, bloke? I won, and you lost."

I dropped the storage stone into the mud and heaved the large rock back into place and used Shape Earth to warp the rocks around me together, sealing them around the bead. It would take thousands of annual floods before that lump of rock was moved or worn away enough for the bead to be exposed, if it ever was.

I was the only human who knew this place, the only one who'd ever have a reason to come here. I watched the far side of the river for a time, hoping to see that stag, to check if it was as magnificent as my memory told me it had been.

But it didn't come. I opened a portal back to my army and stepped through, the weight of Aphrodite's Source pulling at my belt.