Dei wasn't completely sure what was happening, but he'd grasped enough to know he was somewhere he shouldn't be, and immediately confessed this, quickly sending out a use of Gesture. "I don't know! One of my spells went rogue and dragged me here! I promise, I have no idea where I am and was searching for nothing!"
'Am I talking to a Leviathan?' he wondered. 'This realm is clearly something to do with them, and suddenly a monstrous eye appears? But no, this… this is too hot. Leviathans emit cold. If this is any Primordial Child… it has to be a Dragon.'
The burning eye was slit as well, catlike. That matched up with what he pictured a draconic eye to look like as well.
"Oh?" the flaming eye spoke. "You entered hell by accident? Sheer chance?"
"HELL?!" Dei shouted in his next spell. "I… Yes! I apologize!"
'Shit, is this the Christian God Yahweh? Ohhh fuck. If it wasn't a passing God that sent Jesus but an actual, DEDICATED God? Well, I think the bible says to beg for forgiveness…'
"I'm sorry! I am not from this universe and I think my spell is malfunctioning when encountering your laws of Physics! I'm pretty sure it was supposed to take me to the Spirit Realm on Earth, but it seems like Earth does not have a Spirit Realm, so hell was the closest it could find! I beg of you, forgive me!"
Dei was sure he was as red faced as could be from stress. If he wasn't already dedicated to Aloran, he probably would've fallen to his knees right there, but as it was, he could only hope the local God spared him.
The slit of the eye narrowed, the God behind it focusing intently on Dei as he felt his legs almost buckle under the pressure of its inscrutable gaze.
When he heard a rumbling laughter emanate from the eye, he finally allowed himself to relax slightly. 'Laughter is good! That means he hopefully does not want me dead!'
"I believe I understand now, little devil. It has been quite some time since a visitor has come to Earth, exit through the gateway I open and one of my followers shall honor you with an explanation."
The eye slowly closed, the thin line of orange light shrinking to only the length of a doorway before opening once more to reveal a room beyond with white brick walls. There was a coffee table in the middle of the room covered in food, couches surrounding it.
On the couch directly across from the gateway sat a handsome man in blue jeans and a white long sleeve button down wearing a gold laurel on his head, watching Dei with a curious gaze.
He was about to start moving towards the door when he realized something.
'Doesn't the bible say hell is a place without God's presence? Does that mean he cannot reach me in here, which is why his eye only glimpsed through the door? Is he trying to get me out of hell to launch a sneak attack?'
When he thought further though, the idea seemed absurd and unnecessary. It was clear this was some kind of misunderstanding and, even if it wasn't, this was a God Dei was talking to. He remembered from Aloran's memories that Gods had no trouble passing from one universe to the next.
True, he could run to another universe and try to escape… but what then? The God would likely catch up rather quickly if it genuinely wanted him dead. He'd garnered its ire somehow by visiting a place he shouldn't have, and right now was the only time to correct that. If he ran, it would be an admission of guilt.
'Okay so, running from a God is not a good idea. Let's… get on with this I suppose.'
Hesitantly, he nudged his ride to the gate as he thought it would look a bit silly to swim there himself. When he was close enough to reach out, he recalled Wild Chains into himself, and it disappeared into his chest right as he kicked off its receding back. Seconds later, his feet came down on the hard ground.
He sort of expected to come out magically dry, but a veritable puddle spread out from his feet as seawater poured off him.
The handsome man raised his eyebrow at Dei, watching him make a mess on the otherwise pristine stone floor.
"...My bad."
The man shrugged, pressing a button next to a speaker on the table and saying "Could you bring a towel in here?" into it.
Dei took a moment to study the room and man more thoroughly, seeing the bright alabaster stone lit by white fluorescent lights overhead. To Dei's left was a polished wooden door, but that seemed to be the only entrance or exit. Despite his incredible senses, Dei found that he was unable to hear anything beyond the door. The room was halfway between a medieval temple and a modern day office with its fancy stone, bright lights, and phone on the table.
The man himself was startlingly handsome, to the point that Dei couldn't believe he was a random person in whatever religion he now found himself talking to. The man had well defined muscles under the shirt, a chiseled yet cleanly shaven face, short hair but not to a buzz cut, and piercingly blue eyes. The kind that made people uncomfortable because it looked like he could see straight into your soul.
As Dei and the man finished assessing each other, the singular door opened up to reveal a woman, thankfully one that was of regular levels of beauty.
'If the secretary was drop-dead gorgeous, I was just gonna assume eugenics.'
The woman walked in with a towel, looking between Dei and the man. The man pointed at Dei, still dripping wet, and she nodded, quickly handing him the towel before leaving.
Dei dried himself off as best he could, which was actually quite well as leather didn't hold moisture. Dei almost perpetually wore his Praerel leather at this point, though he'd made a point to scrub it every night. He just couldn't get the idea out of his head that the military might attack him at any given moment, so he kept it on- not because he assumed it would stop them from blowing his head off if he was caught unaware, but because he wanted the option to leave the universe on a dime.
"So," Dei said while he continued to get as much off him as he could. "Who are you?"
"Luke. You're a devil?"
"Uh… No? I don't think so?"
"Didn't you just come from hell?"
"I mean… yea I guess, but I'm still not sure how I got there. Or where that even is. I arrived on earth like three days ago man, I don't know what's happening."
Luke shrugged, "Alright, I wasn't given stiff instructions. I was just told to get your story if I could and God would tilt the scales if he had any questions of his own."
"Oh okay, so that actually was God. Like, the Christian one?"
"You know what Christianity is?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "But only sort of. He's like… all of them. Lives in the sun and watches over Earth to strike down any threats to it."
'Lives in the sun?' "You mean like The Champion?" Dei asked, remembering an entity Aloran mentioned before. A big Dragon that lived in the sun and watched over Avium, guarding it from other Dragons and probably entities that threatened life as a whole.
"You've heard of him?" Luke asked, alarmed.
"It's actually-? Oh yea, Aloran said Primordial Children are shared between universes… forgot about that. To answer you, yea my previous universe had The Champion, but I think it was a different version than yours. Like a parallel version."
Luke stared into the distance thoughtfully for a few seconds, focusing back on Dei. "I have questions, but it seems you do too. If you tell me your story, I'll answer what I can."
'At this point I think my full story is gonna leak pretty easily. My alibi is paper thin in the first place. Whatever, I can't exactly tell God no.'
Shrugging, Dei finally got the last of the water he could off him before going to sit on one of the couches and start chowing down on the veritable mountain of food before him.
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* * *
"So, what, the bubble was a dead God the whole time?" Luke asked him.
"Yea."
"That's crazy."
* * *
"Demons are different from devils?"
"I think linguistically they aren't even parallel. Their word for demon just translates to 'ultimate evil' in English and the memory packet Iora left me automatically links that to the word demon. Also, I still don't actually know what a devil is according to Earth language apparently, but tell me that later."
Luke shrugged, eating another grape and letting Dei continue talking.
* * *
"Damn, the whole castle blew up? Only a pair of smoking shoes?"
Dei nodded. "Yea, the explosion vaporized everything. Don't even know where the rubble went."
* * *
Finally getting to the part where Dei linked all his spells with Connection, resulting in Cycle of Sealing to mutate into the form of a Leviathan before dragging him down into hell for no reason. After that, he encountered The Champion, stepped out, and here they were.
It was a long story, but Dei had abridged a lot, so it had only taken around two hours to tell. He wasn't in risk of running late for his meeting with Loretta just yet, and he told Luke he'd like to keep it like that, as he didn't want the U.S. government suspecting things.
"Understandable," Luke said, "They know about the Champion but I'm sure a lot more attention would be drawn to you if they found out you were in contact with his church."
"Yea, speaking of, mind if I start asking questions now?" getting a wave to continue from Luke. "So what's the deal with this place? You said this is The Champion's church, how come I've never heard of you all? What do you even do on Earth?"
"A whole lot of nothing. We pretty much just handle the paperwork for The Champion and deal with his mortal affairs. Because Dragons are the only kind on Gods capable of existing in the Physical realm, looking at them directly tends to make your eyes bleed. The reason you could even look at the eye you did without dying is because his presence is drastically reduced when in hell, so the water around you essentially acted as a buffer and spared your mind. We train to withstand his presence, then do what he asks of us."
"Next question, what, exactly, is hell? You seem to draw a lot of parallels between me and devils when I bring it up but I'm still confused."
"That's… something of a long story, so I'll start from the beginning. I'd like to preface this by saying I probably know a lot more about the different realms than most, because I'm trained to be a spokesman for The Champion, so I need to be more knowledgeable, but the story starts around the beginning of time, which is far more recent than is widely believed. The Champion states that his consciousness awoke around the time of Mesopotamia, so that's when we believe time started in this universe."
"Wasn't that like… six thousand years ago? That recent?"
"Yea. Some have posited his mind was simply dormant before then, but he says this universe itself was created from a fragment of a much older universe that was split into pieces to create the multiverse, hence why certain things appear to be older than that. Any one being that existed before their universe fragment was created tends to be more widespread."
"So does that mean… a supreme universe split only six thousand years ago?"
"Not quite, more like it's still splitting. As more pieces flake off, more universes are created. Our piece flaked off around six thousand years ago."
"How? What would even cause such an event, what I assume is some kind of catastrophe? What would cause a universe like that to break?"
Luke chuckled, "That's a good question, but The Champion refuses to answer, and nobody actually knows. Either way, we're getting off topic. So, six thousand years ago, time starts. The Champion has memories of the 'Supreme Universe' as you've put it, so he knows what each universe is supposed to look like, but he finds that not every fragment is made the same. Our particular fragment, after all, did not start with all the Primordial Children, or even very many. We did not start with the Titans after all, and none have ever passed through. We do have The Mother at the core of our planet, but she's never woken up, and continues to remain dormant to this day for whatever reason.
"No, the two things The Champion noted are that he was the only Dragon to appear in this universe, meaning he's all alone, and that only one Leviathan appeared as well. He ultimately does not miss other Dragons, as apparently they were quite destructive compared to him, but the Leviathan was a problem. Both The Champion and this Leviathan, named Lucifer, realized that, if they could kill the other Primordial Child, they'd have a universe all to themselves. The problem was, confrontation.
"According to The Champion, he's the strongest Dragon," pausing a beat, he looked at Dei, and Dei nodded.
"He is."
Smirking, Luke continued. "Anyway, yes, he's the strongest Dragon. Lucifer? Random Leviathan, so of course Lucifer wasn't going to enter the Physical world to fight him. Instead, Lucifer sends armies of spirits to Earth to make pacts with humans and fight on his behalf."
"Why not go into Lucifer's realm? True, he'd be weakened by it but… honestly, I couldn't imagine him losing if he's THE Dragon."
"And you'd be right. If The Champion entered hell, he would've whooped Lucifer easily. The problem is that Lucifer's realm wasn't his alone. It was what you would refer to as the Realm of Leviathans, the place where all Leviathans exist. If he'd entered there, other Leviathans would've come to Lucifer's aid from other universes, perhaps even parallel copies of Lucifer."
"Huh? How? Is it that easy to cross universes? In that case, why didn't more Dragons and Leviathans come to Earth?"
Surprise flashed over Luke, and he said "Oh! That's right! You're still quite new to multiverse travel. Well, you see, each of the different realms have their own unique properties. The Dragon Realm is the only one that is separate from all its parallels, while things like the Divine, Conceptual, or Leviathan Realm are all connected. Meaning that a Leviathan can easily swim from one universe to the next in the same way an affinity can interact with one universe and another at the same time. True, travel between Dragon Realms is possible, but much harder than any of the others. They are separate."
"In that case, why didn't Lucifer get more backup? Why didn't more Leviathans come in to help? More than that, why would there ever be more than one Lucifer, if every Leviathan exists in the Leviathan Realm rather than the Physical, and only the Physical is flaking off from Mega-Universe Number One"
"Put simply? Lucifer probably didn't tell them. Chances are, he wanted the entire Realm to himself, so he didn't call for backup or mention that it was just him and one dragon. As for why Leviathans and other Primordial Children still duplicate, despite not being Dragons? That's because the Dragon Realm is an anchor point for concepts- its a distinction. If the Physical Realm didn't exist, everything would merge together in one big soup as every concept would collapse on itself. Leviathans exist, in relation to the Physical world. Without the Physical world, there would only be the idea of Leviathans, not individual Leviathans. Less than that, the concept would decay into the idea of a creature, then the idea of life in general, decaying further into the idea of creation, the idea of chaos until eventually nothing exists at all.
"No, in order for things to remain separate, the Physical, Dragon Realm is required, hence why many Primordial Children still interact with it. It's hard to make civilizations and people when nothing technically exists, so the Physical Realm is where most of the worshippers live. The Physical Realm is the only one with causality, so when it separates, all the other Realms duplicate to maintain their connection with each. Still, despite each individual piece of the Leviathan Realm diverging to maintain a link to the Physical realm, the core of it is still the same. If a Leviathan dives deeper, giving up their Physical form in favor of their conceptual form, they can easily cross dimensional boundaries to another universe linked to the Leviathan Realm, which is to say, all of them.
"The Champion avoided diving into this realm because it would've sent shockwaves out that a Dragon was attempting to invade the Leviathan realm, and every able-bodied Leviathan in range would've come to repel the invader- seeing a Dragonless, defenseless universe, ripe for the taking."
"And The Champion could not call for backup as easily," Dei muttered.
"Correct. Still, he wanted Lucifer gone, but he couldn't do it himself and Lucifer wasn't leaving his realm. What The Champion could do, however, was send an Emissary. Someone he personally picked, knew would become a powerful mage, personally train, and empower multiple times throughout his life."
"Jesus KILLED Lucifer?!" Dei shouted, both shocked and excited. That would've been a tale for the ages!
Luke laughed, "Just so. The Champion made a deal with Grim, the Reaper, on Jesus' behalf. Grim would provide Jesus with infinite mana in his battle against the Leviathan, and in return, Grim was entitled to all mana stored within people upon the moment of their death for the rest of Earth's existence. Jesus died, went to the Grims Realm, finalized the contract, came back to life, dipped into the Leviathans Realm, and slew the beast of God's behalf. Without a Leviathan to provide a constant stream of mana for smaller Spirits, the Spirit Realm collapsed and spirits went virtually extinct. Jesus went his way, so on and so forth."
"What!? What happened to him? Where'd he go?"
Luke shrugged, "Another thing The Champion hasn't revealed."
'The ending is so abrupt I swear to… Uh, Aloran.'
"Either way, you said Grim was entitled to all mana at the moment of the person's death, but I used my mana after dying, did I not?"
"That has to do with Contracts and the like, which I can explain in detail if you want, but the gist is that you slipped around certain requirements because you were actively using your mana. The next thing I wanted to answer was how you asked why you were continuously being compared to a devil, and I think I understand your confusion more. You would compare yourself to the Grim Reaper. In your own language, Devil and Reaper would be synonymous, as those who mutated themselves to more closely resemble Lucifer were called devils. I see now that the title of Reaper is the official indicator that one follows the path of Leviathans in general, and you follow a different one than the one we know of."
"Yea, I don't have anything against The Champion. This one, or any other."
"That's good, because you're gonna have to take a vow of silence before we let you leave this universe, but we'd be more than willing to pay you for cooperation however you like," Luke said, looking at Dei sympathetically.
'Y'know? Not altogether a bad deal. I'll request the right to ask more questions, and they get confirmation that I'm not gonna reveal this little paradise for The Champion to anyone else.'
"Let's talk more about what this vow would entail," Dei said, leaning back in his chair.
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