FINAL CORE - Chapter 143 (Patreon)

Isn’t it just so quiet now?

Somewhere in the world, in a place where it is cold, a gentle wind presses through a clearing amidst a pool of droll gray and white — a forest, covered in snow and ice. Flakes of soft powder fall loosely from the sky, drifting down toward the world like tufts of volcanic ash that stem from a very distant eruption.

What might have been disastrous there in that faraway place — ruinous — is here entirely unnoticeable, barring the snowfall. The horrors and anarchy – all of those things are not really of interest. That’s all too far away.

The world is calm.

The trees sway in gentle motion, dancing only ever so slightly, and bow their heavy, snow-laden, bare crowns to the king of winter, under whose dominion they now preside for the duration of his reign.

But then something changes.

Softly and slowly at first — ever so gently. A ray of warm, unusually soft, and kind glow enters into the world from above, shining upon the winter snow that covers the world. At first, it is only a single trickle.

Days pass.

And with each passing day, the shine strengthens just a little more, just a little more.

The people of the world, lost and frightened, somehow manage to find a new order now after the anarchy. Given the nature of the crisis, it was in a sense always a regional conflict, from which many parts of the world were spared — in theory. However, the word of Isaiah, the gospel, had infected so many people. Pilgrims left their homes on other continents to travel here. From all over the nation and the world as a whole, people uprooted their entire lives to leave, to go to the tower of Isaiah, following the call of its crystal bell — that now lays submerged deep, deep down in the black of an ocean filled with indescribable things. There in the secret darkness, statues of angels and gods sit surrounded by creatures that cannot be given a name or shape — the entire construction claimed by the deep.

These pilgrims have no choice but to spread out back into the world.

This is the will of heaven.

Many awkward homecomings are had, and hard words are shared. Over time, the faith of Isaiah, without its resolute, living avatar, becomes… foggy. It was too short and too dense, and while there is a significant following that maintains its worship, it is confined to the eastern continent.

The Holy-Church of the nation in which Isaiah had come to be has entirely forbidden the worship of the entity, by decree, classifying it in the same depths of depravity as witchcraft or demonology.

The world finds a way.

The south is destroyed, the horrific magics of the witch Perchta having stained the land forever and, together with the scarring and shaping of it by Isaiah’s hand, having caused the region to flood and be consumed by the oceans of the south. The break in the sky, the seam that connects the physical world to the spirit-world remains intact, and, as a result, the entire south is lost, not only because it has sunk into the sea but because it has sunk into the spirit-world.

Now, anyone who would tread there for generations and generations to come will be lost and unable to ever return to the realm of the living. The nation makes due, but not without great stress after losing one of its five most important cities. The economic troubles that come lead to a dire hardening of hearts and minds, which leads to a hardening of hands and eyes. In the decade to come, people will be weary and desperate. They manage to live their lives, but not without significant struggle, which begins a century of selfishness, greed, and survival.

People live together, but they do so out of necessity.

Their souls become heavy, losing all of the lightness of joviality and brotherhood. Although even within this state of being, pockets of warmth of spirit manage to flourish within families, both made and found, in far brighter resonance than they might have ever had without the stark contrast present. People fight to survive, to make money, to live — but many do so within the cities they reside in, with a flame of love in their hearts for the people they’ve found to cling to.

In the age of suffering, the strongest contrasting emotion tinges the era, and they say that those people who reside in it somehow, despite everything — those who manage to make such connections — make them on a depth of meaning that is rarely, if ever, found by any souls in this world.

True kinship of spirit and body, only possible because of the hardships of the time.

But that’s all then and later.

For now, another day passes and then another. The forest changes, shifting and turning as the boughs of the trees begin to righten up somewhat more, their load breaking apart and melting.

More days pass.

White snow drifts lazily down towards the ground, falling from the clearing sky of an unusually warm winter’s day. The end of the season of winter finally seems to have arrived after many bitter months.

Song-birds swoop through the air, chasing after each other and whistling, bringing with their chirps the first hint of a spring, which may yet come in a day not far from today.

During their brief bursts of song, the world remains hauntingly silent.

And it is good.

There is no war this time to interrupt the delicate nature of their chirping as they fly about their lives in a forest that is pure and untouched — paradise itself — for such creatures, at least. Blackbirds and thrushes, crows and doves, deer and rabbits, wolves, and all manner of beasts wander the forests, disturbed not by the trappings of men.

It is a place where, strangely enough, these animals just live quietly.

Just the same as the humans find a way to live quietly.

Significant tensions build between the continents, fueled by the worship of Isaiah that remains on one side of the ocean and by the human-centric rhetoric of the Holy-Church, but war does not break out.

Somehow, negotiations, talks, and trades all manage to fall into place. Serendipitous events prevent troublesome escalations through sheer happenstance that no one really knows of.

Of course, nobody inside this political back and forth notices such things directly, rather only seeing that everything is going well.

If one were a sharp-eyed, learned, and faithful scholar of the world, they might consider the fact that this was divine intervention — sparing the world from another conflict so soon after this year and the troubles it brought.

Although the faithful always believe that divine intervention is taking place.

— The last of the snow falls from the trees. A bird lands on a branch, twisting and tilting its head as it examines the spot curiously, perhaps wondering if this is a good spot for a nest?

It is.

It is good.

The world is at peace, though a difficult one. But if one were to examine history as a whole, from a distant, outer perspective, one might come to see a change in the patterns that have, until now, been played out.

While the trajectory of life has always leaned toward advancement in spite of the hundred-year crises, it has been, over eras, tedious.

Nobody alive now will live long enough to see it.

But those who live longer than simple lives will come to see the world and how it changes, how it becomes worse, and then, eventually, after a very long time, becomes better.

— The little bird catches a worm and then looks, confused, down into the hole the worm had stemmed from, down into the glowing pit that it doesn’t quite understand. Indifferent, it takes its prize and flies to its tree, nested atop the now leaking glow of a thing buried in the soil — a core.

A dungeon-core, one of the forty-nine in the world, now that a spot is open. It begins to burrow and grow and change, coming to life and to wakefulness.

As is mandated by the kingdom of heaven.

The doctrine of non-intervention, or minimal intervention, has been employed by heaven — the spirit-world — for generations now, as the gods have all learned that by intervening in human affairs, they’ll step on one another’s toes and cause far more problems than they had hoped to solve with their efforts. Not just with other gods and their desires for the world but also with the desires of the people of the world themselves too.

After all, shouldn’t all the people of the world be free to choose their own lives and fates, free from the hands of a puppeteer above?

— Isaiah’s taloned finger swirls through the water of the well of souls as it looks down at it, at the many dead.

“She’s in there good,” says a voice from behind Isaiah.

It nods, staring down into the well, far, far, far down into its reaches, where even it cannot touch. There grows a festering mold, silently hissing to itself in the darkness. The soul of Witch Perchta, returned because of her death, but not as a normal spirit. She, with her powers, has managed to cling to some sort of state of half-death.

She won’t ever be reborn like this, but she won’t die either. She’ll just float there in the water, in the emptiness, forever.

At least until she lets go. If she did, she would likely return to the cycle of life and rebirth, like everyone else.

But Isaiah doubts that she wants to do that. She’s not done yet.

So what good would it be if it left too? It isn’t over yet.

Besides…

Isaiah turns its head, looking at its great prize as its talons pluck out another color from the fountain, pulling an erratic, buzzing soul out of the waters of rebirth, the next of the many it has to retrieve.

“We’ll just have to let her be for now,” says Isaiah, looking at Red, who has taken on a new form now. After all, they’re no longer in the tower.

She is no longer an uthra. She is something else, something other.

“Chief,” says Red, looking around at the kingdom of heaven. “You know I love you, right?” she asks. “Not in a not weird way.” Red looks around the garden, quietly and calmly gleeful. “This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” she says, not referring to her direct resurrection.

Isaiah stares at the soul it picks out of the water next, shining with orange light. “Everything I do, Red,” replies Isaiah, setting the soul free into the air and watching as it comes into shape and form, buzzing with uncontrollable energy. Its golden eyes scan the garden, littered with bodies. The glint of a golden blade of resplendent, heavenly magic rests against the side of the well. “- I do for my family.”

“Still, I mean, damn,” says Red, walking up behind Isaiah and grabbing it from behind as she looks over its now wingless shoulder as it reaches into the water to pluck out the next soul so that it won’t be reborn into the physical world. “I didn’t think you had it in you,” she explains. "I mean, I did, but I still didn't expect it," says the closest soul next to it. "So, do we run heaven now?” she asks, her fingers locking over Isaiah’s front as she watches it pull out a crystalline, glowing orb from the waters of rebirth. The soul in its fingers crackles with energy, like crunching glass.

“No,” replies Isaiah plainly and calmly, letting the soul fly free and take on a shape of its own, hovering over the body of a god who had perhaps meant very well indeed, with intentions of a warm heart and a kind spirit. However, he had not understood the difference between the strength of his love for Isaiah and Isaiah’s love for its own. Isaiah looks at Red, turning its head over its shoulder, leaving the two of their faces, both changed in appearance in these new forms, close. “We run everything, Red,” says Isaiah, narrowing its golden eyes that shine like the light of a new day. “And we do so by the sword.”

And though none in the world know it, with the day and title of the entity having ended on the mortal coil — they now reside firmly within the age of Isaiah.

And it is good.

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And then they smooched.

THE END

Thank you all so much for reading FINAL CORE! What a ride this one was, eh?

What comes next is that I will, as always, edit and polish this story. I want to add more sections with people like the crusaders in their normal lives, more dungeon-segments to the mid and late parts of the novel as we lost a lot of our dungeon-coriness on the way, more Mauve (haha) and some other characters who could have used a little more screentime. So be sure to check in now and then!

As for Patreon, I'll be adding a backlog for Black Knight and Mirabelle, as well as another cool project (Dungeon Core) I think you guys will enjoy a lot! See you soon! <3