Chapter 3
As though nothing had changed, morning came.
The sun rose. Birds sang. The city woke.
Only the chosen felt it.
Throughout the kingdom, the former markers were awakening with an uncomfortable sleep. Godly heads smoldered beneath flesh. Weapons hummed. The blessings so quiet since the ceremony were all suddenly straining, like straining chains.
The first to react were the demigods.
They were in temples, estates, and fortified halls, with their godlike blood reacting to some pressure which they did not know the name of. It was not a command. It was worse.
A parental expectation.
A pull.
Others were on their knees, and did not know why.
Others bit their teeth and their hearts beat high because one thing came to their bones.
Something had got the gods on the wrong foot.
It was in the capital of Panan, under a shrine cut with the signs of six pantheons, that a young man came suddenly to himself. His servants shone a short time, and then died.
He was blessed by a war god.
He had never defied an order of God.
Yet this time, no order came.
Only a direction.
To the north.
Such another demigod got it in the east.
One of the priestesses in the south had fallen half-way through her prayer.
The blessed knight threw up blood as his sigil recluse knotted itself in agony on his bosom.
The gods were pointing.
But not speaking, it appears while the gods are aware of the threat the new witch possess, they still wish to use the witch to train their children.
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Archie walk away in the orphanage yard because the city was not awake fully.
He crossed back streets, barefooted, and then with the boots which had been borrowed in a row of clothes being dried. He did not steal out of need. He took what was unused. What would not be missed.
He soon got to know that the world was not changed.
Only the rules beneath it had.
The people went by him blindly. Others gave him a second look, and were vexed, and turned their heads. His hair, silver hair, attracted attention, but not questions. They had felt uncomfortable seeing the hair but silver hair wasn't such a strange thing in a world of gods, vampires and mythical creatures.
Archie smiled at that meekly.
At noon rumors were already going about.
A failed blessing.
A divine rejection.
There is a monster that is concealed in the orphanage.
None of them were correct.
It was at dusk when Archie found himself in the outer districts.
That was when he felt it.
Not divinity.
Movement.
Someone was searching.
Not through the eyes, but through borrowed senses. He felt eyes on him checking his soul.
So, that is the way you hunt, he said to himself.
Demigods.
Blessed carriers.
Leashed champions.
The gods could not descend unto the world
Hence they despatched those as yet able to bleed.
Archie went out into the crowd and reality was adjusting without any sound or light. No spell. No chant. Just understanding.
In the crowd, the head of a demigod fell of his head, with a smooth straight cut through his neck. Archie appeared again as he continued walking into the distance.
At first the crowd did not know what had happened.
The demigod dropped and people kept on walking several seconds. Discussions were held, carts were pushed, merchants were crying their prices. It was only after blood started to trickle down over the stones that the illusion of sanity was shattered.
A woman screamed.
The noise broke the street into pandemonium. People swiveled around, moved backwards, and the panic was like a water ripple. The betrayed demigod was still, and his crest, which was God-like, trembled feebly over his breast in perplexation at its own defeat. The blessing tried to find its footing, sought divine intervention, sought a power hostile to save the demigod from death.but the cutting had not been according to the divine logic.
Far above the mortal sky assays an invisible Power. Throughout the kingdom, some of the blessed people stopped in their tracks with their marks becoming hotter on their skin. One of their own was dead not less than two hours that they've been sent after a being they know nothing of.
Archie continued walking.
He did not turn his head round to look at the body. The panic sound dissipated behind him as though it were sound of a different world. His movements were slow, undressed, and merged with a natural rhythm of the city. Men were passing him without looking and those who did make a momentary glance redirected in the fascination that his silver hair caused, yet these glances were very transient before the gaze turned.
He observed quietly.
The world had not changed. Vendors argued over prices. Children were running after each other in the narrow streets. Guards were grumbling over lengthy shifts under temple flags. But deep down he experienced a different set up of things. Strands of meaning ran across reality, like patterns under water, although not visible.
He could feel them reacting to the death of one of their own. Some mighty demigods are sweeping the city with their immerse divine sense.
The hunters had fallen to grasp the initial defeat.
They would now be more cautious.
Archie hesitated a little when a faint pressure was pawed at his consciousness. It was delicate, genteel as compared to the previous probing. One was seeing through the eyes of another, and to gauge his power.
He smiled faintly.
So they learned.
The deities were not able to come down to the world. Their laws were too limiting for people with their strength. They instead moved their pieces on the board in the use of selected vessels. Demigods. Blessed warriors. Supermen with the pieces of the divine power still endowed with mortal flesh and able to take independent actions.
Pieces that could bleed.
Archie went to a more quiet street, the shadows becoming longer as it grew near evening. The presence came and made no attack. It waited, watchful, and watched him pass.
Good, he thought.
His shadow was flashing through a window of glass. Down his back his silver hair flowed, and caught the dimming light. His face showed no emotion, but almost like one that found an old game it had not played in a long time.
At the end of the street he paused.
The observant presence ceased also.
It is the first time that he has awakened and he feels anticipation.
The second competitor was not going to be a test.
And this once would be the first time that they tried to fight back.
Archie looked around and suddenly an arrow went straight for his head.
"Interesting" Archie said as all was reducing in speed about him.
The arrow was suspended in the air still a moment out of its proper time. He bent his head a little bit and the arrow flew past the side of his cheek, parting the curls of his silver hair, and digging fiercely into the wall behind him with a dreadful bang.
The woman in the end of the street had not lowered her bow.
She was a tall figure, clad in plates of armor, wrought with delicate marks of deity, gleaming, as though, with hotness, of marble. Her gaze was smooth and steady and free of fear. She was a blessed warrior. She was ready unlike the first one.
"Target confirmed" but her voice made it sound as though it were delivered by air. "Unknown anomaly. Godly classification was unsuccessful.
Archie gazed at her with interest, but not with enmity. He could even smell the blessing that was encircling her in the form of disguised chains. It throbbed with power, gauged him attempting to know his powers and identity.
It failed.
She released another arrow.
Then another.
The projectiles were divided in the middle of the air into pieces of light and made a cage which enclosed the projectiles on several sides. Divine constructs, which are accurate and absolute, did not leave a way out as per the rules they took.
Archie stepped forward.
Not away.
The truth was slightly distorted when his foot came in contact with the ground. The curves of arrows were round him like they had lost their mission. Two fell on the road, and broke into sparks. One melted away and vanished in his presence.
The warrior eyes narrowed.
She changed positions and drew a longer arrow, the head of which was shining with concentrated power. The atmosphere became humid as the power of the divine was concentrated and made the surrounding structures creak with strain. Windows cracked. Dust fell from rooftops.
"Stand still," she ordered.
This was not just talk this time round. It was a command that had weight a divine command and one that was intended to bind motion itself.
Archie paused.
Not because he obeyed.
Because he was curious.
The command came to him and pushed against his existence, and glided over with nothing to take hold. Like trying to grab smoke.
His smile deepened slightly.
"So that is the way you fight"he said.
He took another step.
The ground did not shatter. No explosion followed. But there was a distance separating them which became unnaturally small, the distance collapsing without any apparent alteration.
The warrior immediately responded. She thrust the loaded arrow away.
Light charged along like a spear which was to thrust home in body and heart. The line below it, godly power slicing a line through the rock.
Archie raised his hand.
It was momentarily halted just before his palm, with a breath. The divine power threw itself about, and tried to fulfill its command with all violence, but something which could not be perceived pressed round upon it on all sides.
He tilted his head and looked at it, as one looks at an unknown implement.
Then he closed his fingers.
The arrow disintegrated into nothingness.
Silence followed.
To the very first time, there was uncertainty on the face of the demigod.
She acted with haste, and had thrown ranged attacks. In her hand a blade appeared and she bridged the gap which divided them in a sudden flash which shook the air behind her.
Steel flashed up to his neck.
Archie was not going until the very end.
His body was a little off to the side and the blade was passing through nothing where he used to be. He brought forward and tapped her wrist before she could recover.
The motion looked gentle.
The result was not.
Her godlike armor was flashing like a madman as though reality itself had temporarily abandoned its existence. And as she tried to steady herself she tore lines in the stone with her boots and staggered back.
"Your power is not being used properly" said Archie. "You are too obedient. Sometimes you need let your power run free"
In another attack she came, quicker, hits following each other in a disciplined rush. Each strike was divine, and it could cut through the less powerful creatures without any problems.
None of them landed.
Archie also moved with little or no energy, almost laziness: he was unnaturally efficient between attacks. The space about him was out of place, the distances were a little inconsistent, angles were shifting slightly, and the eye could not follow all the way.
Anger came into her face as she felt Archie was belittling her. She felt he was looking down on her.
She stretched Godly power to the extremes.
The light burst forth out of her body and filled the street. Power was as the airing of law itself.
"Submit."
The word rang like thunder.
There was a momentary freeze of the world.
Then the reality made a different decision.
The light fractured.
Archie appeared behind her.
His hand was resting barely on her back.
He then pushed.
She was hurled to the side, hitting a wall of stone in a tempest of rubble.
Dust lay gradually over the desolated road.
Archie stood motionless and looked on with a sort of attention at the broken structure. "Allow me to show you true strength" Archie said and his scimitar appeared in front of him as a terrifying wind blew around as his energy stirred the human environment.
The bless warrior stood up as she gathered all her energy in her blade. Archie made a down slash before his scimitar disappeared.
"Only demigods with not less than three years of battle experience can be my match. I might currently be weak but newbie warriors are demigods are not my match" Archie said before he walked off into the dark night. The blessed warrior he left behind was divided vertically at the middle to two equal parts.
Just as Archie was about to step out of the city a disturbance occured. A black wind blew covering everything in darkness then suddenly Archie found himself in a city of darkness, a city where darkness reigns.