Uvandra

  “The Courtesan, The Tactician, The Guardian, The Messenger.” A young man floated down from the room’s large domed ceiling, somehow having appeared without Uvandra able to notice, six fluffy silver fox tails behind him, two fox ears poking out of his long silvery hair, and an extra eye in the center of his forehead. “The Ruler, The Smith, The Actor, The Merchant.” The fox man smiled as he landed. “The Healer, The Reaper, The Watcher, and The Prophet.

  “These are the twelve divine roles our goddess is aiming for, and the twelve divine aspects it will be your job to spread to her believers.

  “What would you like to ask first, Uvandra of Dova?”

  Uvandra took another look around the room, taking special note of the statues and the room’s complete lack of exits while thinking about its central positioning in the space station. “This room is some kind of artifact to help grant the power of divine classes?”

  “Yes.” The fox man nodded once, a gesture Uvandra took to mean assent. “This space station is a specialized divine residence that will be used by the United Federation of Planets’ gods in the future, one that will also be some sort of superweapon.” A look of distaste flashed across his face for a fraction of a second, and Uvandra got the impression he’d just relived some sort of annoying memory. “Right now, however, much of the station’s energy is going toward the empowerment of three temples for the United Federation of Planets' three mortal divinities, of which this one requires the most.”

  Uvandra took a deep breath at the information that not just the Mistress of Oaths and Deception could grant divine classes, but she didn’t feel like wasting time asking questions about that, nor about how the three could grant divine classes without ascending. Instead, she was more interested in something else. “The statues representing The Messenger, The Ruler, The Smith, The Actor, and The Merchant all seem significantly stronger than the others. Is there a reason for this?”

  “Of course.” The fox man turned to look at the five statues in question before looking back to her. “Lady Li has the power to absorb the divinities of gods she’s slain, making their power her own.”

  Uvandra stopped breathing for a good three seconds.

  Five divine roles, five gods. The Mistress of Oaths and Deception, likely with significant help from her husband and maybe others, had already killed five gods. And, given the war between the United Federation of Planets and the Primordial Humans hadn’t escalated drastically, with gods of other factions joining in, there was a good chance no one knew yet, meaning they’d done so secretly.

  The fox man chuckled as Uvandra lost control of her aura, waiting for her to finally calm herself.

  “You are Vanar Tedros?”

  “Yes.” The man smiled and nodded at her again.

  “Are you also a divinity? Or are you a priest of some kind?” She couldn’t sense any aura from him, the man feeling like a G rank mortal, so it was hard to get a read on his power.

  “A priest. My main class currently is Pontifex of the Federation, a variant of the Pontifex class that allows me to receive and use the divine power of Lord Aalam, who you know as the Heavenly Spark Soul King, and any of his servants, which include Lady Li, the Mistress of Oaths and Deception, and Lady Diana, the Draconic Spirit Queen.” Vanar Tedros’s aura then suddenly appeared, showing off what Uvandra was pretty sure were six Law Scarabs and at least another hundred Laws, all mixed together with a chaotic power she couldn’t identify, no divinity present in his aura whatsoever. But then his aura changed, three divine energies merging with his own immense power. One gave off the feel of yin and yang combined in a heavenly cycle, another the subtle feeling of mixed power she felt from all the statues in the room, and the third a purity the likes of which she’d never felt, like the birth of a universe. “I’ve been given the role of leader of their soon to be growing priesthood, and I will be your commander for the next several tens of thousands of years.”

  “The main question, though, is if you want to be a priest of Diana or me?”

  Uvandra moved her head around rapidly to look for the source of the voice but soon came to the uncomfortable realization that the voice, which she was pretty sure was the Mistress of Oaths and Deception’s, had been sent directly to her brain, her hero not actually present.

  “You have to remember to look down.”

  Uvandra quickly did as the now audible voice had suggested and watched as the Mistress of Oaths and Deception, golden eyes flashing with amusement, floated through the solid material of the teleportation platform before landing on the solid floor next to Mr. Tedros.

  This was obviously an illusory clone, one of the Mistress of Oaths and Deception’s most famous skills, but it felt solid to all her senses, like a G rank, the same as Vanar Tedros before he’d released his aura. And, like Vanar Tedros, it released its aura to show just how powerful it was, it’s pure aura stat many orders of magnitude higher than any Uvandra had ever felt, approaching what she’d always assumed gods would have.

  “From your memories, you seem to be a fan of mine, yet you deliberately turned yourself into a bloodsworn of Diana, so you could alter your reward to be a priest of hers instead.”

  Memories! The inside of Uvandra’s mind was trembling. For one, the Mistress of Oaths and Deception, or at least a part of her, was here, and focused on her, which was a dream come true. On the other hand, the woman had just said the word memories, implying she’d read through Uvandra’s entire mind, and that was utterly terrifying.

  If she could read memories, did that mean she could alter them as well?

  “Yes.” The Mistress of Oaths and Deception’s clone nodded, seriously freaking Uvandra out. “Since I was a D rank. I even gained a class based on it when I advanced to C rank. And I was hoping to make a new type of divine class based around the ability, one I was hoping you would help me experiment with.” She started to look sad and Uvandra couldn’t tell if the empathy she began to feel for the woman was a charm ability, some sort of divine effect, or just a natural result of the woman’s ability to act. “But, if you’d rather gain a powerful mage or summoning class instead, it’s your choice.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Without warning, Mr. Tedros transformed into a white and black ghostly longsword, the same sword Uvandra had seen the Draconic Spirit Queen wielding in her first official address to the Prime Material, and the weapon flared with the pure divine power Uvandra assumed came from the Heavenly Spark Soul King as Mr. Tedros controlled himself to cut through the Mistress of Oaths and Deception’s clone, the charm effect Uvandra was under instantly disappearing.

  “No charming members of the United Federation of Planets, even if its only a passive effect of one of your divinities.” Mr. Tedros transformed back into his half-fox, quarter-human, quarter-tuathan form and rolled his eyes, but then the Mistress of Oaths and Deception turned toward him, her eyes growing unnaturally big as they filled with tears, and he just sighed.

  The charm effect, at least as far as Uvandra could tell, didn’t come back, but her mind started to race. The Mistress of Oaths and Deception was different than she’d originally thought, more powerful yet at the same time weaker, seemingly having to follow the rules of her husband. But, if that was true, would the woman who could fool A ranks and gods show it, and would Vanar Tedros, a man who she had a lot more information about, really do something as risky as attacking her.

  It was weird, and it was twisting the way she thought about both of them.

  Were they just having fun at her expense? That somehow seemed more logical.

  Then, however, Uvandra thought about what she’d been able to infer so far about divinity. Divine roles seemed important, and they were presumably based on how people viewed the god in question, but, for a bit, her view of the goddess in front of her had shifted drastically, and, if she actually believed what she’d seen, it would have greatly shifted the nature of her faith.

  She looked at the statues again. The Mistress of Oaths and Deception in her mind most resonated with the divine roles of The Tactician, The Courtesan, The Actor, and The Reaper, but there were eight other roles, some of which likely resonated more with the true version of the woman. Those born in the universes controlled by the United Federation of Planets, for example, probably thought of her more as a ruler and a guardian than as an actress, assassin, and manipulator of men.

  While she was thinking, and looking especially at the statues representing the divine roles of The Watcher and The Prophet, sounds of clapping started to emanate from behind her and she looked back at Mr. Tedros and the Mistress of Oaths and Deception’s clone, the latter of whom was clapping.

  “Good.” The woman’s body language took on a more imperial air as she smiled at Uvandra, even while her aura stayed that of a mortal. “You’re mostly correct, and I definitely was trying to have a bit of fun.” Her air then changed to be a bit more mischievous. “But did you miss the part where you grew far less scared of how I’m reading your mind without your permission?”

  “Oh.” Uvandra suddenly felt a little embarrassed.

  “I didn’t lie, however.” The illusory clone walked closer and reached out a hand, on which was what Uvandra assumed was a real spatial storage ring. “Here are your rewards for your hard work so far, the resources necessary to advance your race a grade and greatly boost your potential, along with a cultivation technique ideal for a mix of the darkness, life, and space elements and a specialized pill to reforge your cultivation to a level suitable for a future pontifex in my own religion, personally made by my husband.” The woman’s golden eyes flashed with what on anyone else Uvandra would have read as barely concealed rage. “Assuming of course you don’t want to be a battle mage or summoner.”

  “No, Ma’am.” Uvandra reached her energy into her personal storage space to extract the spatial storage ring she’d stolen for the woman, but she couldn’t find it. And that, from almost everything she knew about magic, should have been even more impossible than reading her mind.

  “Good.” The clone clapped her hands together again and appeared excited. “Fix your foundation and advance your race first. Then, afterwards, I’ll help you gain a new specialized class and form a really powerful divine core.”

  The clone then disappeared, vanishing completely without Uvandra able to sense it leaving, and Uvandra found herself alone again with Mr. Tedros.

  “Can she just completely bypass all my soul defenses?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is she often so…playful?” Uvandra still didn’t feel it was quite the right word. “I always imagined her being far more serious.”

  “It’s hard to tell.” The fox man looked at where the clone had disappeared from. “My general rule with Lady Li is to completely disregard anything I would normally guess from her body language, tone of voice, or word choice. She rarely, if ever, lies to anyone who is not an enemy, so I trust anything she says to me directly. But I never try to infer anything from her.”

  “It seems like an odd way to act.”

  “Yeah.” Mr. Tedros shrugged. “My guess is she is lazy and would rather all her subordinates not consider her as reliable as she actually is.”

  Mr. Tedros then activated the teleportation formation under their feet to bring them to a different part of the space station. “It’s also why she likes to hire competent and industrious idiots like us.”

  They arrived in a large meeting room covered in two-dimensional screens, each showing what seemed like data reports from hundreds and hundreds of temples, and there were a few dozen other cultivators in the room, most of whom were B ranks, Uvandra especially recognizing Sally Davies, the Mistress of Oaths and Deception’s ex-step-grandmother, and Edi Tanorputra, the Mistress of Oaths and Deception’s only apprentice, from the information she’d been reading from the universe’s local System network.

  “Now, for what we’ll be doing over the next few thousand years,” Mr. Tedros continued, “guiding the faith energy accumulation of the population under the United Federation of Planets’ control among the Heavenly Spark Soul King, the Mistress of Oaths and Deception, the Draconic Spirit Queen, and the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s master, the Undying Phoenix, an ancient monster goddess from the Prime Material who managed to revive herself from the dead, along with any member of the United Federation of Planets who has a high chance of reaching A rank or has already done so, chief among them the Yin Yang Sage, the Alchemist of the Deep Woods, and the Dragon Knight.”

  He turned to look at everyone else. “Everyone, this is Uvandra, future pontifex maximus of Lady Li’s religion if nothing goes wrong, and our newest sacrifice.” He then looked back at Uvandra. “Uvandra, these are all the people Lady Li has tricked into doing her dirty work.”

  “Oh, don’t mind him.” Edi Tanorputra walked up to her and shook her hand. “He’s just grumpy he has to miss some of Immortalia’s torture sessions due to having a true job for the first time in his life, at least one that doesn’t involve him torturing others. And he’s greatly underestimating how this type of job will help him advance his Laws.”

  “I was tricked into this by the promise of power.” The fox man grumpily sat in one of the room’s many chairs and picked up a data pad, starting to look through some reports that seemed to have been sent from the Prime Material. “And I don’t have multiple minds like most of the rest of you.

  “Mark my words, Uvandra is going to be just as grumpy in a few years.”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure about that.” Sally Davies turned her head from the half-dozen screens in front of her to look at the fox as Uvandra felt her heart start to race at the thought of the big ever-changing puzzle everyone else in the room was already working on. “I’m never going to bet against Mila’s ability to choose people.

  “Just look at how useful Edi has turned out to be after his rebellious phase ended and work he was perfectly suited for finally appeared.

  “Trust the evil process, Vanar, and trust the evil leader.

  “You will eventually look back and realize just how much better your life is than had you not allowed her to sink in her evil claws.”