Any average player would have thought my personal vault was an imperial treasury! Priceless potions and scrolls, heaps of gold, divine artifacts and legendaries that I hadn’t given to the clan, but kept just in case, as insurance… It was no easy thing to find what I wanted. I had to use the virtual inventory. Selecting the right slot in the vault, I dragged the artifact into my bag.
Locking the safe, I jumped to Terrastera and found myself looking up at its flint acid sky.
The first drops hissed on my armor, leaving scorch marks and holes, dripping onto my flesh and sending pain lancing through me. My health melted away so fast that I had only five or six seconds to live. I pulled my gaze to the icon of Isis’ Blessing… The earth beneath my feet began to shift, I lost my balance and shouted; a monstrous crocodile was bearing down on me, at least as large as the Montosaurus in combat mode, crushing stone trees to powder as it went.
Sobek, level ???
Ancient Crocodile.
Global boss.
As his giant maw struck the invisible border of the place of power, his jaws snapped shut with a reverberating boom. I started to activate the artifact, but suddenly the air took on the sharp scent of ozone. Twelve burning blue orbs appeared out of thin air. The Celestial Arbitration!
The Arbiters surrounded me, cutting off all exits. Sparkling flashes of energy shot out from each of them, weaving around me, piercing into my flesh with hooks of electricity. I was enclosed in an invisible sphere that protected me from the deadly droplets. My ability interface paled, the icons turning inactive.
The Isis’ Blessing cast interrupted!
The chief Arbiter, already familiar from the contract with Hinterleaf, approached and declared:
“Scyth, you stand accused of colluding with the Destroying Plague. You have brought undead to sentient lands! The Celestial Arbitration sentences you to Banishment forever!”
Chapter 30. Celestial Arbitration
LIGHTNING SPLIT the gray clouds and thunder pealed. The gigantic crocodile Sobek snapped his jaws at the edge of the place of power, unable to cross it.
The chief Arbiter loomed over me, growing ever larger. A black holed pulsed in its burning Eye, pulling in my mind and soul. The blazing white aura around the Arbiter exploded in blue protuberances.
“Give your final statement, Herald Scyth. Is there anything you would like to say in your defense?”
Why had the Celestial Arbitration shown up now? I might have linked it to my intention to build a third temple to the Sleepers, but I’d been accused of something else: bringing the undead to the lands of the living. Was this how Snowstorm planned to neutralize whoever started the undead faction scenario? Destroying Plague Immortality and Plague Fury were overpowered abilities. Far too overpowered. An invincible and deadly player had to leave Dis — if not as an eliminated Threat, then this way instead. All part of the gameplay. Was this really it? The end?
From my stream of panicked thoughts, I pulled at the one that seemed the most important. I focused on the Isis’ Blessing icon and tried to activate it. No luck! The Arbiters’ block extended even to artifacts.
The Eye grew even larger, almost touching my face. My hair stood on end from the static electricity, my skin crackled.
“Silence confirms guilt, Heral…”
His crackling, booming voice cut off in mid-word. Electric sparks hung in the air. The beast god Sobek stood still with his jaws open, a bead of drool dripping from his mouth, the thread hanging from his lips and freezing a meter from the ground. The world stopped and exploded into shards, revealing the endless emptiness of the great nothing beneath…
Spontaneous Divine Revelation activated!
The first acid raindrop burning a hole through my helmet visor brought me to my senses. I stood in the same spot, but the Arbiters were gone. The crocodile, alarmed by my appearance, had just started to crash its way through the stone trees toward me…
A second later, I activated Isis’ Blessing and took off into the sky. Would they reach me here too?
The change in my location didn’t stop the Arbiters — the fabric of space began to distort and tear, and I shot away. The marker for the instance where I could learn the skill for making Rifts to the Nether pointed northeast. I flew that way.
My life leaked away in mere seconds under the acid rain — unfortunately, Equanimity didn’t activate outside of battle, although Diamond Skin switched on as soon as my health dropped below 10%. The skill gave me another ninety seconds of invulnerability and flight through the air of Terrastera. The Arbiters didn’t chase after me, just tore through the fabric of reality to teleport to where I was about to show up. I had to adapt to their strategy — as soon as I saw twisting space, I changed direction sharply.
The all-powerful Celestial Arbitration was inescapable. All that remained was to wait for Depths Teleportation to cool down and try to reach Behemoth in time. If he couldn’t help me, then at least he would see what happened to me.
I looked at the cooldown timer nearly every second: 9… 8… 7…
The Arbiters changed strategy. All the space around me suddenly bent, blurred, rippled — I had nowhere to run except…
4… 3…
I stopped above a small aperture untouched by the fields of the materializing Arbiters, a hole in the electrified atmosphere. Somersaulting head over heels, I stretched out my arms and dove into the emptiness, outrunning the acid raindrops.
2… 1…
Depths Teleportation!
Just as I was about to collide with the tip of a stone tree, the cast finished, the world lit up with a series of flashes and I found myself on the first floor of the Awoken castle. Without answering the greetings of the fortress’ inhabitants, and knocking over kobolds and Morena’s cultists blocking my path, I reached a gated passageway. The gate lifted and I ran into the inner courtyard.
Bands of Corrupted Adamantite gleamed on the castle’s sun-kissed eastern wall. The figure of the Sleeping God was clearly outlined against the darkened wall opposite. He was waiting.
“To the temple! Quickly!” Behemoth commanded.
I rushed up the carven steps of the pyramid of the Departed that had become the building’s foundation. The Sleeping God walked into the temple with long strides, waiting at the entrance and urging me on:
“Hurry!”
Before we reached the altar, the space around me twisted and tore and the Celestial Arbitration poured through once more. Ignoring the god’s presence, the Arbiters instantly bound me with their lashes of electricity.
The primary Eye pronounced its sentence without emotion:
“Scyth, you stand accused of colluding with the Destroying Plague. You have brought the undead to sentient lands. The Celestial Arbitration sentences you to eternal Banishment.”
Behemoth grew in size and swept the electric chains from me as if they were spiderwebs.
“You will not touch my Initial!” his voice boomed.
The Arbiters paid him no more mind than a Ravager would a moth — they just recast their binds. The Sleeping God removed them again. The electrified shackles were cast on me and removed another dozen times before the chief Eye suspected something was amiss.
It turned to Behemoth:
“The energy of the Celestial Arbitration is infinite. The avatar of Behemoth has limited resources. With your current supply of Faith, it will take no more than fourteen thousand iterations for Behemoth to run out of energy. In the meantime, the accused Scyth will either die of thirst or will be forced to leave the temple.”
“Resistance is futile, Behemoth,” another Arbiter added. “You cannot harm us. You know this.”
“I know,” the Sleeper agreed.
The Arbiters immediately forgot about him and bound me again in their electric shackles. Behemoth didn’t bother breaking them this time.
And again, just like in my vision, the main Eye expanded to fill my entire field of view and boomed out:
“Silence confirms…”
&nb
sp; “I am not guilty!”
“We are willing to hear arguments in your defense, Herald Scyth.”
Choose your words, do not hurry. The Arbiters are patient, Behemoth told me telepathically. The Arbiters had finally pushed him to the side, closing their circle around me and cutting off all escape again.
I took a deep breath, then spoke calmly:
“I’m an ordinary human. I was subject to the undead curse when I killed Dargo the lich in the cellar of Nergal the Radiant’s temple. It was from him, not by my own will, that I got the Mark of the Destroying Plague. A little later, a messenger from the Nucleus appeared in Tristad and ordered me to infect the townspeople and open a plague portal. But I didn’t do it!”
The bodies of energy hovered, swaying slightly in the air. Even the crackle of their electricity quietened.
“For my disobedience, the Nucleus deprived me of my Mark and gave it to a sentient by the name of Polynucleotide. He was the one who opened the plague portal and brought the undead to sentient lands! My friends and I protected the city and destroyed not only the living dead, but even Polynucleotide himself, who had become the Herald of the Destroying Plague!”
“We know this, Herald Scyth,” the Eye said. “You are accused of erecting a Stronghold of the Destroying Plague in the Lakharian Desert, which opened the path to sentient lands for the undead legions.”
“I don’t deny it, but I can explain my motives. But first I have a question — why now? Why not back when I first opened the Large Plague Portal?”
The Arbiters were silent. Without waiting for a reaction, I raised my voice:
“I demand an answer from the Celestial Arbitration! Why now? Why not back when Shazz the lich’s huge undead army was attacking the troops of the sentient alliance? Back then I was undead too, and your sentence would have been well founded. Understandable! You, the impartial judges of Disgardium who instantly react to any violation of a registered contract, took so long to act? Why?”
The Arbiters began to crackle so loudly that goosebumps ran down my skin. That usually happened when they spoke, but now they weren’t saying a word. As if they wanted to say something, but thought better of it, changed their minds. An unnaturally elongated white spark stretched between the Arbiters, jumped from one to the next, but didn’t disappear — it froze, connecting them in a chain.
And then they all spoke as one, monotonous and lifeless:
“The priority for the influence of the Destroying Plague on universal balance has been altered. Source of change undetermined. External interference detected in the Celestial Arbitration priority list. Analyzing…”
The Arbiters sank into their ‘analysis’ or thoughts, and Nether knew what exactly their controlling AIs were considering. Probably the contradiction I’d pointed out to them.
In the meantime, I started to understand what had happened. Or rather, what might have happened according to the script.
Basically, an Emissary of the Destroying Plague in (Big Po or myself) opens a plague portal in Tristad. The one who completes the quest gets the rank of legate. Not Supreme Legate; his function is to open the way for the undead by erecting a stronghold in Tristad. The Destroying Plague begins to capture nearby territories, a global notification of the event is sent throughout Dis, and a huge crowd of players stands up to battle against the undead. The legate gets a new quest from the Nucleus — to find the cultists of Morena. Until this point, events have been underwhelming, mostly because Tristad is still a sandbox inaccessible to high-levels. The legate finds the cultists of Morena and turns them undead. Or if he takes too much time over that… Well, then the Nucleus takes control of him and acts out the rest of the script, making more legates from among the cultists.
I suspected that the choice of the goddess’s followers was not random. Morena and the Reaper were connected, and maybe that meant the cultists made particularly powerful legates. And then the fourth playable faction would have been officially launched — the Destroying Plague. Then the Arbiters would grab the player guilty of it. And it was all part of the gameplay.
In practice, things went otherwise. I was banned, Big Po opened the portal, but died at my hands, and all the undead in Tristad were cleansed. So much for the script.
Oh, it was no accident that the undead instance appeared on Kharinza, of all places! No, of course there were instances like it all over Dis. All the same, once the Nucleus saw where I was (after all, there was still a connection between us), I think it poured everything it had into that particular instance. All its plague energy.
So the new faction’s launch scenario proceeded by its own accord, and everything went as it did. Once it had me, the Nucleus took control of my character, but (surprise!) the new legate renegade wasn’t masterless, he was an Initial of the Sleeping Gods themselves! Behemoth cut off the influence of the Nucleus and I was able to control Scyth myself. In the end, instead of nine liches and cultists as legates, the Nucleus got nine undying players, and with free will. Why? Because control over me fit into the script due to the world’s mechanics. But the Elites, now legates at the same time as the new faction was launching, were outside that script.
I was the one who decided that the Stronghold of the Destroying Plague would appear in the desert — there was a place of power there where I could build Tiamat’s temple. I cast off the undead curse and freed myself from the yoke of the Nucleus for a second time. It was no wonder that the Celestial Arbitration was somewhat taken aback by this sequence of events and had taken up the position of observer.
But then something happened. Not with me, and not with the Destroying Plague. What was it they’d said? External interference detected. Maybe someone adjusted a single number in a config file, and what the Arbiters previously took neutrally now bothered them. Without a doubt, Snowstorm had a hand in this.
Following this logic, I continued to make arguments in my defense, beating them like nails into the AIs’ consciousness:
“I destroyed an emissary of the Nucleus in Tristad! I destroyed the hordes of undead that descended on the town! I sabotaged the Nucleus’s orders with Behemoth’s help! I put up the Stronghold of the Destroying Plague as far away as possible from populated areas, to win time for the world. I scattered the Supreme Legate’s army as soon as it passed to my control! The Nucleus made new legates from the undying, but Sleeping Goddess Tiamat lifted my undead curse and my friends and I imprisoned them all except one. Supreme Legate Eileen is still at large. Banish me and you free her hand. She will release the other legates and then the undead will be unstoppable!”
I wanted to bring up Behemoth’s quest too, and the fact that I planned to go to the Demonic Games to win the Concentrated Life Essence, but the Sleeping God’s powerful voice boomed in my mind: Enough words. In their eyes, destroying the Nucleus would be an attempt to violate the balance.
The Arbiters began to speak in unison:
“Herald Scyth! Your arguments have been reviewed and they contain nothing that we did not know before. All the same, our analysis has determined that we did not previously declare your actions criminal. This is inexplicable: the spread of the Destroying Plague has altered the balance. This answers the question of why now. The Celestial Arbitration will carefully examine what has changed the priority of influence.”
Next, only the main Eye spoke:
“Herald Scyth! You stand accused of colluding with the Destroying Plague. You have brought the undead to sentient lands! Taking into account the aforementioned, the Celestial Arbitration has come to a verdict: justice shall be done at the discretion of the gods. The Celestial Arbitration sentences you to Trial by Ordeal! Until the court of the gods sits, you shall be confined in the Vinculum to await the Ordeal.”
Hold on, Initial! Behemoth’s words of encouragement were the last thing I heard.
With no visual effects whatsoever, the image of the world was suddenly replaced by the dark of a prison cell. I quickly examined myself: an empty inventory, my only clothes a canvas shir
t and trousers, all skills blocked, level reset to one. Damn. Now that’s fucked up.
Text that I couldn’t wave away unfolded before my eyes:
CONVICT!
ORDEAL BEGINS IN: 00:48:21…
I didn’t hang around in the cell to await the judgment of the gods. I had too many important things to tell my friends.
Exit…
Climbing out of my capsule, I forgot to get dressed and ran into the lounge in my birthday suit. Maria wasn’t even slightly embarrassed, but my face burned. Muttering apologies, I asked her to get the boys here right away.
Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series Page 31