Seeing the happy smile on Nocta’s face, he continued to move the reflecting pool’s vision through the marketplace. There were acrobats and contortionist, several snake charmers, and even a magician who used sleight of hand to make it seem as though things appeared and disappeared into thin air. His divine vision had no problems seeing through the deceptions, no matter how speedily and cunningly the mortal performed his tricks, but he had to admit it was impressive. Would he be able to fool other gods if he tried the same thing but with divine speed? He’d have to practice first before he tried. It would be interesting, and it would give him something else to do in his free time apart from studying and training.
“How about we look for another god?” Nocta asked. “There’s bound to be someone doing something fun in the mortal world.”
Solos grinned. “Sure. That sounds like fun.” The reflecting pool was supposed to reveal anything in its field of view, even another god. “Hmm…” He reached out. This time, he would try to use his mind to control the reflecting pool. It responded, and he felt a mild questioning sensation, almost as though the reflecting pool were alive and curious about what he wanted to see. Which god should he search for? Not Death – that was one god he didn’t want to annoy. Maybe Life? She was said to be quite friendly for a Greater God.
The reflecting pool shimmered.
And Life stared right back at them.
Solos and Nocta yelped and jerked back, and Life’s eyes followed them every step of the way. People weren’t supposed to notice when the reflecting pool was looking at them, but Life definitely seemed to notice.
A peal of tinkling laughter filled the chamber, and there was a rustle like the autumn wind through the trees before Life appeared, floating above the reflecting pool. The goddess was clothed in a garment woven of living flowers and leaves that radiated a pure, soft light that reminded all who looked upon it of the dawn breaking on the first day of spring. Her skin was an ever-shifting palette of colour, and her eyes shone like rainbows. She held an exceedingly cute and cuddly rabbit in her hands, and a little dragon that couldn’t be more than three feet long was coiled about her shoulders like a scarf. The winged reptile’s eyes narrowed faintly at the change of scene, and it hissed and flicked out its tongue, flame smouldering in its mouth.
“Are you enjoying the reflecting pool?” Life asked. Her lips curved up into a smile that was somehow equal parts welcoming and dangerous. On her shoulder, the little dragon bared its teeth and blew out a small cloud of flame.
Solos and Nocta nodded silently.
“Wisdom and Knowledge certainly outdid themselves when they created the reflecting pools, but I’m not sure they considered the trouble they can cause although perhaps they did and simply didn’t care. It would be just like them to find all of the trouble highly amusing.” Wisdom and Knowledge were twins, and they were cousins, of a sort, to Mayhem, Mischief, and Rabble although as Greater Gods their powers were far, far beyond those of the three siblings. “I don’t mind you looking in on me from time to time, but there are other gods who will mind. I suggest you avoid using the reflecting pool to spy on other gods. Not all of them will be as… accommodating as me.” She paused and her smile turned toothy – even toothier than the smile the dragon was now sporting. “And don’t even think of aiming the reflecting pool at the personal realm of another god. You could start a fight that you don’t have any chance of winning, not even with your father’s help.”
“Ah, yes, thank you for your advice, Lady Life.” Solos sketched a quick bow before reconsidering and bowing all the way to the ground. Nocta quickly joined him. Life smiled indulgently and gestured for them to stand.
“Um…” Nocta gulped. “If… if it’s not too much to ask… could I… borrow your rabbit for a day or two?”
Life’s smile widened. “You may, but you must take good care of him. I expect him to be returned to me safe and sound.”
“I promise I’ll get him back to you without so much as a scratch on him!”
“His name is Snuggles,” Life said. “He is exceptionally clever for a rabbit, so you can count on him to understand what you’re saying.” She handed the rabbit to Nocta. “You must be gentle with him. Despite his cleverness, he is still a mortal rabbit.”
Then Life was gone, along with her dragon, and Solos and Nocta breathed a sigh of relief. Life had acted kindly enough, but her mere presence was overwhelming. Had she not been suppressing her power, they would have been driven to their knees or worse. The young goddess cradled Snuggles in her arms and patted his back. That had been pretty scary, but she’d managed to get a rabbit out of the ordeal, so it hadn’t been all bad.
“He’s even fluffier than he looks!” she exclaimed, running her fingers through the rabbit’s fur.
“Hey!” Solos reached for the rabbit. “You have to share the rabbit!”
What ensued was a playful scuffle over who had the right to hold the fluffy bunny. It was something they’d done before – they were both partial to cute and cuddly things – but they’d never mucked around in a chamber that controlled something as important as the sun. Snuggles himself was perfectly content to be the object of their struggles, but Solos made an awkward attempt to grab the rabbit that ended in disaster. He tripped spectacularly and crashed into one of the control panels, rolling over it and then tumbling to floor after hitting dozens of switches and buttons and turning several dials, to say nothing of the levers he moved as well.
Bright lights began to flash. A loud, clanging sound filled the chamber.
“Uh oh.” Solos got to his feet. “Did… did we just break the sun?”
* * *
Down in the mortal world, a weary farmer looked up into the sky and blinked slowly at what he saw. Perhaps it was all the wine he’d drunk the previous night – and it hadn’t even been particularly good wine although maybe that was the problem – but he could have sworn that the sun was flashing and turning different colours. Oh, he was probably just seeing things. He should go back to sleep until the wine had finished doing its work. The fields would still be there tomorrow, and that’s what he had children for. Let them work the fields for a day or two while he waited for his head to clear.
He laughed and then winced at the sound. The sun flashing and changing colours? Impossible.
* * *
Nocta grabbed Solos and screamed. “What did you do?”
“What did I do?” Solos wailed as the angry klaxon of alarms filled the chamber. Snuggles was happy to watch them run around like headless chickens from his position atop one of the consoles. If anything, he appeared to be amused by their despair and panic. It was almost as though he’d planned the whole thing, but that was crazy. A rabbit couldn’t do that… could he? “What do you mean me? We both did this.”
“Oh, no! Don’t try and pin this on me! You broke it!” Nocta let go of him and grabbed her hair. The flashing lights and alarms were not helping her state of mind whatsoever. “I can’t believe it. You broke the sun. It’s turned into some kind of giant flashy thingy.” She grabbed him again and shook him. “What do we do? They’re going to kill us. Death is going to come after us with his scythe and consign us to oblivion. We’re going to cease to exist and –”
“Calm down! We can fix this!” Solos pried her hands off him. “I just have to remember what my father taught me.” He paused and then gave a scream of frustration. “Ah! I’m panicking too much. I can’t remember what he taught me.” At this rate, he was going to hyperventilate even though gods didn’t need to breathe. And were the alarms actually getting louder? This was a nightmare, an absolute nightmare. “What do we do?”
“You said there was an instruction manual here, right? Right?”
“Yes!” Solos hurled himself at the drawer with the manual. He yanked it open and pulled out the manual. “Here it is – ah!”
The cause of his unbridled horror was the size of the manual. It had to be several thousand pages long. He opened it, and his horror only increased when
he saw that the entire thing was written in miniscule text that required divine eyesight to read. This was crazy. How was he ever going to find what he was looking for?
Wait. For a second, hope filled his heart. There was an index and a table of contents. He hurriedly flipped to the appropriate page as sweat began to bead on his forehead. “Ah!” There was no more hope. There was only despair.
“What?” Nocta rushed over as Snuggles yawned and rolled onto his side to take a nap.
“Look!” Solos screamed. “Look at what it says!”
The entire section – no, the entire instruction manual – was written in what could only be politely described as incredibly dense technical jargon. How was anyone supposed to understand this? It was absolute gibberish. What was a quantum-state divine energy photonic converter array with a trans-dimensional focusing lens? What exactly did hyper-dimensional topology have to do with anything? This was hopeless. Only Wisdom, Knowledge, or one of the gods who served them could possibly make any sense of this. Him? He was doomed – so, so doomed.
He pawed through the manual with mounting desperation before screeching to a halt. On one page was written a very simple set of instructions. In case of emergency, he could push a certain button. Well, this was definitely an emergency, and he could definitely push a button. He ran over to the control panel, smashed a glass panel, and pushed the big, red button.
And then the whole world fell away.
* * *
Solos opened his eyes. He was staring up at a sky that seemed to be made of endless shadows and smoke. Lightning crackled on the far horizon. There might have been stars too – he could almost make out the gleam of them – but the veil of shadows and smoke made it impossible to be sure. It didn’t help that there were clouds of fire and ash drifting through the sky. He got back up and looked around. Where was he? He’d pushed the button, and then he’d ended up here. But where was here? It didn’t feel like the mortal world, nor did it feel like the divine realm. The ground beneath him was scorched rock. Cracks and chasms littered the landscape, some of them going on for miles and extending equally deep into the ground. Here and there, he saw titanic shapes moving, some of them made of gleaming metal while others flitted upward like comets before vanishing into the sky.
No, this place definitely wasn’t the mortal world. His divine eyes would have been able to see the sun or the moon, no matter how thick the clouds were or how dark it was. This had to be somewhere else. Since it didn’t feel like the divine realm, it had to be another realm, most likely a personal realm that belonged to one of the gods.
“Where are we?” Nocta whispered. She and Snuggles had been brought along too. She clutched the rabbit in one arm and moved closer, so she could take his hand. Usually, he would have felt a bit nervous holding her hand, but he welcomed the reassurance. They were friends, and he could rely on her. And he might very well have to rely on her – the gods with their own realms tended to be mighty indeed, like Death or Life.
As if to answer her question, the ground in front of them split open. A pillar of rock jutted up, and there was a message in the elegant script of the gods carved upon it in molten metal. Solos read the words aloud. “Welcome to the Realm of Wisdom and Knowledge. As one of our valued customers, we would be happy to help you with any product-related difficulties you may be having. Please, follow the signs, stay on the path, and do not touch anything. Or else.”
Solos gulped. Next to him, Nocta gulped too before checking to make sure that Snuggles was as comfortable as he could be given their situation. The rabbit’s mirth at their predicament had vanished after finding himself stuck there with them. Solos’s brows furrowed, and as gently as he could, he wove a protective cocoon of divine energy around the rabbit. It wasn’t ideal – imbuing Snuggles with his divine energy would have been better – but he didn’t have the confidence to try anything more involved. Life would be furious if something happened to Snuggles. However, if Solos made a mistake while imbuing the rabbit with divine energy, the little guy would either explode or disintegrate, neither of which would do anything to help Life’s mood.
Leaving Snuggles a bit vulnerable might also come in handy. Wisdom and Knowledge were the twin gods who ruled over inventors, scientists, scholars, craftsmen, and other such people. They also ruled over the gods of smithing and forging. Despite the plainness of their names, they were two of the Greater Gods, their might matched only by their fellows and surpassed only by the Supreme Mother and Supreme Father. If they got mad about Solos breaking the sun, then not even his father would be able to help him. With that in mind, he and Nocta could use Snuggles as a shield and remind Wisdom and Knowledge about how unhappy Life would be if anything happened to the rabbit. It wasn’t exactly the bravest thing in the world, but bravery wouldn’t be enough against a pair of Greater Gods.
But even as he started to feel another wave of panic sweep over him, Solos forced himself to set aside his fears and doubts in favour of the stories his father had told him of Wisdom and Knowledge’s realm. It was supposed to be impossible to fully comprehend, a constantly changing and transforming world that mirrored the projects and research that the twin gods and their subordinates were involved in. One day, there might be an ocean of liquid metal. Another day, there might be a vast mountain range made of crystal. Above all, his father had warned him to never touch anything without asking first since Wisdom and Knowledge had a tendency to leave things – dangerous things – laying around.
Solos studied their surroundings more closely. Now that he knew to look for them, he could see signposts pointing the way down what looked vaguely like a path although it was hard to be sure given the broken, arid landscape. He would normally be able to leave a realm using his own powers, but there was something stopping him here. The twin gods had undoubtedly put measures in place to prevent people coming or going without their permission.
“Let’s follow the signs.” He paused. “I mean… it’s not like we’ve got a choice.”
Nocta nodded slowly and clutched Snuggles closer. “Okay. Let’s hope we don’t have to go too far. This place doesn’t feel very safe.” A cloud of fire rippled upward from a gash in the earth, and something within the chasm gave a thunderous roar. “Yep. This place isn’t safe at all.”
They followed the signs and the path, and it wasn’t long before they found another set of signs along a slightly clearer path. As they continued along, they noticed they weren’t alone. Swarms of flying automata filled the sky above them while larger automata strode, rolled, or hovered across the landscape. They had no idea what the machines were doing, but they knew better than to wander off to watch. Occasionally, automata would stop to peer at them, but they never did more than give a few whirring noises before they moved on. As they came to a river of fire that was spanned by a delicate, slender bridge of some unknown, metallic substance, they spotted an automata diving low before emerging with a bucketful of liquid flame. It swayed once in the air and then flew off, chirping excitedly to its fellows who all had buckets of their own.
“What do you think they’re doing?” Nocta asked. Snuggles had decided that the safest place to be was in one of the pockets of her cloak. Solos didn’t blame him. Nocta loved her cloak. It was made of the fabric of the night itself, and a sliver of her divine power was all it needed to light up in mimicry of the countless constellations that filled the sky of the mortal world.
“I don’t know. Who could? Wisdom and Knowledge built the sun and the moon. I don’t think anybody understands everything they do, but they should be able to help us.” He frowned. “According to my father, time doesn’t flow in the personal realms of powerful gods the same way it does in the mortal world. If we’re lucky, we might be able to get them to fix the sun before anyone notices and we get into trouble.”
After what felt like an eternity of walking – he didn’t think it would be wise to fly in a place like this – they reached a large door. It wasn’t connected to anything. It was just standing there: a hug
e metal door covered in intricate markings. Well, that was the complete opposite of reassuring. Solos put one hand on the door, and it lit up, myriad lights and noises filling the air before it swung open to reveal the inside of a vast workshop. They walked through the door, and it swung shut behind them. As soon as they’d set foot in the workshop, an automaton bustled forward to greet them.
“Greetings.” The automaton had the rough shape of a man, but it was as though its body and limbs were made of boxes. It towered over both of them, but its voice was nevertheless smooth and cultured. The gleam in its gem-like eyes was distinctly knowing and wise. “My creators are currently working, but I would be honoured to escort you to them. This is about the sun, is it not?”
Solos blinked. “Um… yes. Thank you.” Should he be thanking an automaton? He was a god, so did he really have to? Then again, it was better to be polite, and the automaton was helping them. “I would appreciate it.”
“Right this way, Master Solos and Miss Nocta.”
Nocta gasped. “You know our names?”
The automaton nodded. “I know the names of all the gods and goddesses and have been trained to greet them accordingly. My creators are very busy people, and they leave most of the cordialities to me.” The automaton gave a surprisingly authentic sigh. “I am known as Overseer #10001-A. However, you may also refer to me as Tor.”
“Oh. Right. Thank you… Overseer –”
“As I said, you may also refer to me as Tor.”
“Yes, thank you, Tor.”
“Follow me – and do not touch anything.”
They followed Tor through the workshop, marvelling at everything they saw. There were dozens of gods and goddesses at work on countless weapons, suits of armour, shields, and other devices of a less warlike nature. There was even jewellery too, all of it crafted with exquisite skill and most of it organised in truly haphazard fashion. Finally, they reached the heart of the workshop.
“Come back here, you twerp!” Solos stared. Wisdom was chasing after her brother while waving around a hammer wreathed in lightning.
Divine Assistance Page 8
