Side Story - Moric 3: A New Life of Confusion

AN: Chapter 150 will be Wednesday or Thursday. Sorry for the delay but I am sick :(
Next side story will also be Moric, picking off right where this left off. I hope to get it done a bit sooner so you don't have to wait that long.

Standing atop a floating ruin was not what Moric had expected to happen when he had agreed to help the Humans. Though, at this point he was no longer sure if they were Humans. They had simply walked up the floating isles that hung above the Ardynshaide Dungeon, and were now simply creating the stone he had been told could not be made by sitting cross-legged on the ground and channeling their mana into a formation on the ground.

"This is insane," the Lich mumbled to himself as he stepped back from the ledge. "And why do I still feel like I should help them?"

"Because it's the right thing to do?" the boy — Xiu, apparently — asked. "Father always said we know what to do in our hearts of hearts."

"I do not even have a normal heart," Moric rebutted, pointing at his ribcage. "Just a ball of concentrated magic that links to my Soul."

"That is not what I meant," Xiu said with a shake of his head. "It's like your conscience, the little voice in your head that keeps you on the right path."

"I mean, yes," Moric replied, scratching the side of his skull, "but that still doesn't explain why I feel this way." He gestured towards Xiu and then the rest of his family. "I don't even know any of you. I just found your Souls and brought you back."

"Maybe it's because you are a good skeleton… person… thing," Shia, the daughter, said. "What are you again?"

"A Lich," he replied, pointing at the orb. "Regular skeletons don't have that one. They are merely animated by magic, not an actual living being."

The father of the two children appearing beside Moric ended the conversation. He motioned the two small Humans to join their mother before placing a hand on the Lich's shoulder. "I hope Shia and Xiu did not bother you too much. I know they can be a little much at times."

"It's fine." Moric waved him off. "I am not doing anything anyway, so they are not a bother. Speaking of which" — He scratched the back of his exposed skull — "is there anything I can do? You asked me to help you rebuild, but you and Haiwa are doing all the work."

"I doubt you know how to make the materials we need," Beilo chuckled. "Besides, your mana is still in turmoil from resurrecting us; your change is not yet over."

The fire in Moric's eyes flickered slightly at the words despite his attempt to hide his confusion. This was not the first time Beilo or Haiwa had mentioned that he was changing, but despite his best efforts he could not notice anything out of the ordinary about himself. The only 'change' he had seen was when they had somehow given him back his old body, and that had been an illusion. Probably.

"What change?" he finally asked, his eyes fixed on Beilo.

"I do not know what the nature of the change you are experiencing is, only that you are changing." He paused for a moment, simply staring off into the distance. "Perhaps the Lady took notice of you and is giving you her thanks."

Moric rattled his teeth slightly in reply. "Who is your Goddess anyway? I can only think of one that fits your description and she has not been around for a long while." At least according to the Great One.

"The Creator, of course," Beilo replied with renewed vigour in his words. "The All-Mother. Aperio." He waved his hand, a small booklet appearing in his grasp. "I am not surprised you do not know of her; she left this world millennia ago and is only returning now, after all.

"Nor does she seek worship like the other deities," he continued, slowly leafing through the small book. "That might change now, as her conviction is no longer the same. It feels different. A goal is in her mind, even if the roads that lead there are not yet clear."

"How do you know all of this?"

The Human heaved a sigh and lowered his hands, remaining quiet for a moment before he spoke again. "I was something akin to a [High Priest] for her to our people. She never spoke to me directly — never spoke to anyone but her daughter, really — but that forced me to learn to read the mana that flows through this world.

"Like all things, it is tied to her will; her emotions. In the past, she never really let anything permeate this bond unless it was of utmost importance. Now though, her feelings are almost like an open book. She is grieving for this world. There are specks of happiness and warmth, but most of what I can sense is a rage against those that wish to force their will upon others."

"And that is somehow changing me?" Moric asked, leaning a bit more heavily on his staff. "Or is she granting me a boon because I helped her people?"

"Perhaps one, or the other. Perhaps both," the man replied with a shrug. "It is also possible that the act of rescuing four Souls simply changes you. The time you spent in the Beyond was longer any living being should, after all."

Moric's teeth rattled again as she sat himself down on the ground, his legs dangling over the edge. He was sure he had heard of this Aperio before, but his memory was foggy at best. Besides the Great One, the Deremkyir did not really believe in any divine, and Zaine did not want — or was even able to receive — a prayer. Maybe I knew of her when I was alive?

Probably not, he concluded after a moment. That was not to say it was impossible, however. While he had the 'luxury' or remembering most of his life as a being of flesh and blood, large parts of it were rather foggy. Mere shades of what a memory should be.

"Should I pray to her?" Moric finally asking, his head turning a little further than it had any right to so he could look at Beilo. "To Aperio, I mean."

"You can try," the Human replied. "But I doubt she will answer, especially not now."

"Why not?"

"Can you truly not feel the anger that runs through every bit of this world? The confusion? The Fear?" Beilo let out a heavy sigh as Moric slowly shook his head, turning his head even further beyond the point of sense. "She is distraught. Something must have happened that upset her greatly."

The Lich returned his gaze towards the churning sea far below his feet as he pondered the words. He could not feel what Beilo was talking about; to him the mana felt as it always did. A gentle stream that flowed through him, and the world itself. But then, he was a Lich, and feeling was not something he was all that good at. He had no sense of touch or smell, his sight was based off the mana people and things emitted or reflected, and his hearing came from a spell that translated the words into pulses of magic his Soul could understand.

All of the magic he used to emulate what a normal being had made Moric think he should be able to feel what Beilo described. Most of his days were spent looking past reality and into the Beyond, after all. That had to mean something.

"Should we do anything if she is so distraught?" he finally asked, as he was not able to come up with anything else to do.

Beilo merely gave him a chuckle in reply. "No. We have nothing to offer that could help her. Anything we can do would merely require a thought from her. What we should do is help those like us."

"So, what you are saying is that I should look for more of your people?" Moric asked. "That doesn't really work. I can find Souls, but I do not know anything about them before I offer to bring them back."

The man shook his head. "No. I would not expect you to bring anyone else back. By the time we died, most everyone had already passed on properly. I was thinking of the dungeon below us.

"Since you cannot help us with the rebuilding of the central spire, I thought you might have interest in learning about our history."

"And that is in the dungeon?" Moric asked, his eyes fixed on the tower that pierced the ocean below. He had never been in the Ardynshaide Dungeon, but he had heard of it; mostly in terms of how deadly it was. If he was supposed to rest, why should he go into a dungeon filled with deadly monsters?

"Not quite," Beilo replied. He gestured for the Lich to stand up. "I will show you what I mean."

Moric gave the man a nod, standing up while leaning a little bit heavier than he usually did on his staff. He still wanted to ask how Beilo could be so calm after having just returned from the dead. As a Human, no less…

All Moric had wanted to do was raise a family. Mostly because he had been told that was impossible, but also because he had revived parts of ones so many times that he could no longer see the sadness in their skinless faces anymore. He had succeeded, but he had also found people who were definitely not normal. Well, even less normal than other mages.

Even the children — Shia and Xiu — were already more capable at using their magic than many fully-fledged mages he had seen. And they aren't even supposed to be casters. The entire family, which had no surname as far as Moric knew, was apparently focused on martial arts and not magic; something that usually did not require you to be an expert mage or have enough mana to level multiple villages. If they know how to use it.

The more Beilo talked, the less worried Moric was about the people he had resurrected, however. The Goddess they worshipped seemed a lot scarier than the four mortals could ever be. Creator of everything… Why have I never heard of her?

Moric was pretty sure he had heard the name 'Aperio' before, but never in the context of her being the literal Creator of everything. How does that even work? If she made everything, where did she come from?

"Everything and nothing," Moric mumbled to himself, the previous words of Haiwa echoing in his mind. He tapped his exposed chin with a few bony fingers as he pondered the idea. "Is she not real, then?"

"Aperio is very real," Beilo commented, seemingly perfectly aware of what the Lich was talking about. "But you are correct in assuming that she is also nothing. She is the emptiness — the nothing — that came before our world. Before creation."

"That makes no sense," Moric stated, giving the Human his best version of a squint. He could not actually do that as the bones of his skull did not move, but he could direct the fire that replaced his eyes to narrow slightly.

"Oh, I know," Beilo replied with a small laugh. "But that's how it is. She is not like us — never will be — and trying to understand something so far beyond our comprehension will only give you a headache. My wife got stuck in a loop trying to figure out how nothing can make something and where the nothing came from for a few days, once."

"Do not recommend!" the voice of Haiwa called from across the floating island. "It was not fun!"

"We got to meet Aperio because of it, though," Beilo remarked as he opened the door of one of the few newly-repaired houses. "Not something that happens often."

The Lich stepped inside, his steps faltering slightly as his eyes landed on a multitude of scrolls, books, and other equipment he was very sure had not been here when they arrived.

"Our [Dimensional Storage] was never cleared," Beilo said, grabbing hold of Moric's arm to support him. "Probably because we never made it to the River of Souls and were never properly considered dead."

"And you just happened to have the entire history of your people in it…" Moric's voice trailed off as he picked up a black and green book that almost seemed to call to him. "And what does this have to do with the dungeon?"

"Well, we built it," Beilo replied, nodding towards the very book that had drawn Moric's attention. "I was thinking that you would perhaps be interested in our history. That one is focused on the magics we used, and our research on the crystal after it appeared."

"You built the dungeon before there were cores?" the Lich asked, not quite believing the implication.

"Of course," the Human replied. "We built it at the request of our Goddess so that mortals could test themselves to see if they had what it takes to ascend. But when we were done building it, she was gone and we were left with a crystal.

"It had traces of our Goddess' mana in it. Some even said it tried to speak to them with her voice." He offered a small shrug. "We tried to silence the false Goddess, but no matter what we did, the crystal would repair itself."

"And then?"

"And then?" Beilo echoed. "We prepared to leave this world, of course. With the Gods gone and the people blind to reason, there was nothing left for us to do." He offered a shrug. "I have to help my wife with the work now. If you have any questions you can ask Xiu or Shia, they should be able to answer most anything."

The Lich only offered a hesitant nod in reply, his eyes lingering on the door after Beilo had left and closed it behind him. This is insane, he thought to himself as he opened the book he held in his hands. And yet, I want to know more.