Worthy Core

The first response to Theolif's unexpected apology doesn't come from Xenia, but from the elf priestess, Opal. "...What!? You're sorry!? My - my lord, forgive me, but I thought you were seeking him, er, her, out in order to punish her?"

Xenia finds herself nodding along. "Uh, yeah, this conversation's already taken like three different twists I wasn't expectin', and I'm not saying I was looking forward to getting smited again or something, but..."

"Explanations are required. As are further apologies, indeed." The Lord of the Shield rises once again to his feet and turns back towards Priestess Brightsky, although he doesn't return to his throne. "Apologies to you, as well. I wish I had told you sooner, but in my own shame...I suppose I wished to only have this conversation once."

Xenia looks back up at the eight-foot-tall man. "I suppose I can understand wanting to avoid a difficult topic, even if I don't understand anything else going on now, apparently. So for starters - why did you hijack my summoning?"

A slight grin graces the edges of Theolif's lips. "In at least some respects, I'm glad this meeting was delayed until after your conversation with Priestess Brightsky, as her retelling of events has done much to clarify what your point of view must have been on the events that occurred. Indeed, I already knew we had made a mistake before then, but it was not until after hearing your comprehension of the situation that I fully understood where we went wrong." The deity begins to pace about, slowly, although he keeps his focus on Xenia. "I believe you compared the events of our realm to that of 'storybook tales' or some such, is that correct?"

Biting her lip slightly, wondering if that could have been a poor choice of words, Xenia nonetheless nods. "Yeah, it just...felt like there were a lot of similarities between stories I've heard before, you know? Especially with how fights between 'good' and 'evil' always shook out."

"You're not wrong, not on that point at least. But you were mistaken on another. You believed that we gods were the ones guiding events in that fashion, yes? Maintaining an eternal stalemate of good and evil, in which neither side could ever fully triumph?"

"Umm...yeah? I mean, who else? Dark gods maybe, and not you guys specifically, but it had to have been somebody, right? It didn't feel entirely natural from where I was standing."

Theolif shakes his head. "I'm afraid you have the order of cause and effect reversed. Yes, we gods influence fate, and have our impact on the mortal world when we can. But who is it who guides the gods?" He raises an eyebrow before answering his own rhetorical question. "It is the mortals who believe in us. It is mortal belief that transforms an errant wisp of divinity into something of power and will, and yes, we do have wills of our own. But when faced against the belief of the millions of worshipers who sustain us? Their desires, their preconceptions, fence us into our domains, our bounds of behavior. Our realm faces an eternal conflict of good versus evil because the mortals of the realm believe there must always be such a conflict."

Xenia's brow furrows. "Eh? So you're saying you're

trapped in this cycle of storybook tales? How did playing table tennis with my soul factor into that?"

"That was our great mistake, you see - we had some conception of what you were, but we did not understand you. But what we thought...what we hoped was that you would be our answer to all this. Our own strategies with summoned Heroes and other such champions are always doomed to fail. We inherently sabotage ourselves without recognizing it, ignore things we should not have ignored. Maybe that's what happened again, although it's always hard to be certain. But when we take action, evil is always defeated, yet it always survives to rise again, and a new generation of innocents must suffer in the process."

Quickly walking closer from her position by the throne, Opal asks the next question, sounding perhaps even more surprised by all of this than Xenia does. "And how does creating the worst evil we've faced in thousands of years break the cycle in a good way? ...My lord..." She quickly bows her head at the end, but the anger in her voice is impossible to hide. For his part however, Theolif seems unoffended.

"As I said, the reincarnator's soul bore the clear marks of having been a previous Hero, and while we could not see the details of her lives, we thought that was sufficient. We believed we were placing an inside man, or woman, within the enemy camp. She would grow up, gain the trust of those who held power within the Seafall Kingdom, and then, knowing the right moment - she would destroy it from within. With a completeness that no summoned Hero could ever match, acting from the outside."

At the sound of that, Xenia's spirits begin to droop. "So...this is all my fault then. I messed up the plan? Granted, I didn't know there was a plan, but..."

The god turns back to her as he places a comforting hand on her shoulder, a rather heavy weight. "If a father commands his child to carry a boulder and the stone crushes her, is the child to blame? Again, the details didn't become very clear to me until Priestess Brightsky recounted her meeting with you, but the signs of it were obvious in hindsight. Perhaps if we had more time to prepare...but your soul was stretched. Tired. If we didn't have time to see it beforehand, it was obvious by the time you reached even a young childhood. But we were too used to dealing with Heroes at their prime, at the height of their enthusiasm and eagerness. We never considered what a Hero might become after lifetimes of wounds and losses and grief."

Part of Xenia instinctively wants to defend herself, especially now that the god she came to see seems to be willing to shoulder at least some of the blame...but as the words come to her lips, memories come to her mind. The faces of tortured prisoners, screaming villagers, and empty-eyed slaves. "That...yeah, it was pretty bad. I was pretty bad. But that's not an excuse for all the shit I did, either. I came here to try and make things right, and I don't think that's changed."

"Good, because you're correct. It doesn't excuse all of your actions. What it does do, however, is allow us to talk on reasonable terms, rather than having me simply throw your soul into one of our nastier afterlives for a few millennia." As he speaks, Theolif returns to his throne and sits back down, before continuing to speak once again. "And perhaps the fates willed that this would be so, for you come to us with a problem to be solved, just as we were coming with one to you."

The dungeon master's brow furrows, and she has to take a moment to process that. "So you're saying you really weren't looking for me so that you could punish me?"

"No. Some deities might do such a thing, but our pantheon does not possess a Lord or Lady of Vengeance, and we would not risk provoking another pantheon just to hunt down a stray soul. The problem, Xenia Worthy...is your descendants. Perhaps another problem you ultimately caused, but this one at least, I do not blame you for."

"I...did probably have a few bastards while I was here, yeah, though I never officially claimed any of them. Did they pick up where I left off after I was gone?"

The god waggles a hand. "Some tried. Because you never declared an heir, nor appointed a specific second-in-command among your lieutenants, there was quite the struggle for power after your demise. Even with your king father outliving you, thanks to his demonic pacts, he had none of the control over your lieutenants that you did. And your...Fallen Heroes cared nothing for your kingdom or its dark philosophies, only their personal power, and so within a year your father's mighty empire was torn asunder by squabbling warlords. It's perhaps the only reason the remaining free peoples had any chance of survival at all, and have even slowly begun to regain what was lost, although much of the land is still claimed by despotism."

Xenia thinks on that for a bit, but ultimately has to shrug with a sigh. "I'd like to help with that, but I'm kind of rooted where I am. I can't exactly fight any battles for you. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what I can do, although I'm still willing to try if you have any ideas."

This time it's Opal who answers her question. "You're in luck, then. You don't need to come here to fight your bastard descendants. They're coming to you."

That's enough to send alarm bells ringing through Xenia's mind. "Wait, what? Who? Why? They'd have to be like...a bunch of generations separated from me by now, right? What do they want me for?"

Theolif picks up with the explanation. "They were recruited for the task, by a Realmwalker. Another descendant of yours from another realm, some sort of nobility, or so they presented themselves. Thaddeus Worthy, a young man claiming to seek the 'power of his ancestor' for...well, we're not certain exactly what. But he had no small amount of power of his own, and was able to convince some of your less successful descendants here to sign on with his...faction, party, cult, whatever you'd like to call it. They then disappeared to another realm, presumably on your trail in some manner."

Something about the moment feels a little bittersweet. "Man...part of me's always wanted to be able to meet more of my family, but not so much if they're like...my evil grandkids or whatever. But they're not in my current realm as far as I know, and I still can't go hunting them down for you. If that's what you wanted from me?"

"I'm not certain exactly what it is they wish from you, but they certainly seemed to believe that they could gain some sort of great power from you. So, if you seek redemption for your sins in this realm? I present you with two tasks. The first of which is - through whatever means you deem necessary, when and if this cult discovers you, ensure that they can not gain the power they seek and then return here to cause yet more trouble for a realm already sitting on the brink of destruction. So long as they're gone, the free peoples still have a chance of recovery."

Xenia considers that and slowly nods. "I can certainly put up a fight if that's what they're looking for...or maybe talk them into chilling out. Maybe. Would be nice. What's the second task?"

"You are a dungeon in your current life, yes? We do not use a 'dungeon core' system in our realm, but I am familiar with the concept. You absorb the souls of fallen adventurers and use them to strengthen your defenses, is that correct?"

Xenia nods again. "That is, yeah. How does that help you?"

The god leans back into his throne with a sigh. "The Summoned Hero ritual is expensive, as you've surely noticed, it can be performed but twice a year. This is not simply due to the need to embody a mighty soul, but to reinforce it with power, inherent spells and abilities and so forth. But the souls you collect of trained, experienced adventurers? Particularly the most powerful of those? They could be made into Heroes at a bargain rate, so to speak. I imagine we could use them as quickly as you could collect them, and with those reinforcements, the balance could once again be restored."

The dungeon master raises a pair of fingers. "Two problems with that idea. One, unless someone willingly surrenders their life to me, they get all...soul-washed or whatever when they die, they lose all the abilities you're looking for. Secondly, uh, I don't have a way to send you souls."

The Lord of the Shield grins. "You do not, no. That is why I am granting you a Divine Favor, as your dungeon system classifies it. An ambassador, who can intercept the souls before being cleansed, and return them home to me. That ambassador being Opal Brightsky, here with us today."

The green-skinned elf's eyes grow wide. "Wait, what!? Me? My lord...I am honored, but..." Opal's voice trails off, as she eventually appears to come to a conclusion that her divine master is making the correct decision, or at least one she doesn't wish to argue with. Xenia still has some confusion of her own, however.

"You want to give me a priestess? Well, I guess it wouldn't be the first one..."

At this, Theolif shakes his head. "Not merely a priestess, reincarnator. My Valkyrie."