Chapter Twenty-Seven - A Difficult Question

“My father wasn’t an exceptional man. But he had his moments.

He always told me, ‘Son, there isn’t a problem that you should tackle with your wits before hitting it with your fists.’ That stayed with me.”

***

The monk grew increasingly nervous as we made our way up the Path to Heaven. At the second gate he pleaded with me to return and make offerings in apology, by the third, he was trying to warn me with some farfetched parables. By the sixth gate he was struggling to walk under the overbearing pressure of the divinity around us.

I had to give it to the man, he was quite persistent, and he didn’t threaten me a single time. I was reluctantly impressed. I would, of course, have to teleport him away before reaching the seventh gate. He wouldn’t last under so much pressure and I’d feel mildly guilty if he died caught in the collateral of any fight.

“You should go back,” I said for the upteenth time.

“N-no,” the monk panted. He took another step, his slipper scoffing against the stone path. The more we climbed, the fewer supplicants remained on the path. By the fourth gate we were nearly alone. Now, so close to the last gate, there was no one around, just a great view of the mountainscape below and a few sparse trees that could endure the cold air so high off the ground.

“You’re going to pass out,” I warned. “Divine magic doesn’t actually have any physical weight, but rather a sort of metaphysical one. It’s not pressing down on your body, it’s weighing down your soul.”

“I... cannot let you... die,” the monk paused to swallow. “I can intercede. Beg for mercy, on your behalf.”

I eyed the man. His robes were soaked with sweat, and judging by the musculature under them, it wasn’t from the exercise. His back was bent as though he had someone riding it, and his head was bowed, eyes partially closed.

To someone unprepared, a powerful source of divinity could be blinding, though the magic itself cast no real light.

“The seventh gate is just around the corner,” I said. “The magic will get a lot stronger on reaching it.”

“I will endure.”

I rolled my eyes. I could respect his tenacity, and he seemed to mean well, but there was a limit to these things.

“Sleep.”

The monk’s eyes rolled up and he crumpled to the ground. His breathing evened out and the tension of keeping his body standing flowed out of him. A person’s soul was far more vulnerable when asleep, but it was also less susceptible to things like the pressure around us. It was a strange thing, kind of counterintuative that way.

A couple of Mage Hands grabbed onto the monk and lifted him a step off the ground. I’d find a nice place to set him down.

Continuing along, I rounded a curve in the path, one that was precariously narrow, with a steep drop to one side, then I found myself walking up to the final gate.

The first gate had been made of brass and rotting wood. The second iron and oak. Each subsequent gate was made of greater and richer materials. This last one was a huge edifice of jade and gold and silver, with carvings of fantastical creatures with gems for eyes and such fine detailing that some seemed to move as my attention shifted away from them.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

I looked to the side.

A young woman, with pale skin and yellow hair sat a little ways to the side of the gate on a patch of vibrant grass. Her gown, a long pale-green thing with finely embroidered flowers along the hems, was pooled around her with, of all things, a tea set upon it.

“Greetings,” I said to the goddess. “I’m Harold. I presume this is the seventh gate?”

“You would be presuming correctly,” she said. “Tea? It’s freshly brewed.” She raised a pair of delicate cups, both still empty and wiggled them enticingly.

“I’m afraid I’m a bit dry, just like my humour. Oh hoh!”

She smiled. “I hope you don’t mind if I have a cup alone then?”

“Of course not,” I said. “By the way, do you happen to know what I should do with this young man?” I gestured to the monk floating by my side. He was hardly a young man, insofar as humans went, but neither of us were measuring things by the standards of humans.

The goddess frowned. “Did you hurt him?”

“No. He hurt himself. Insisting that I shouldn’t come here. I put him to sleep. He should be right as rain when he awakens, presuming it isn’t here.”

The goddess nodded, and with a gesture turned a patch of grassy soil into a bed of white-yellow flowers. “Could you put him here? It should keep him hale.”

I gestured and my Mage Hands brought the monk over and placed him onto the literal bed of flowers. “I appreciate it. I would teleport him to the bottom, but I don’t know that some ruffian wouldn’t rough him up while asleep.”

She nodded serenly. “I’ll have one of my priestesses look after him. They climb up here every evening. Will he sleep until then?”

“He should. At least until jostled. So, who are you?”

The goddess smiled and took a moment to pour herself a cup of tea, then she sipped it lightly before answering. “Chamomile. I’m Chamomile, goddess of... this and that.”

“Hello. I’m Harold. Neither a god, nor a plain man. And I also dabble in this and that, oh hoh.”

Chamomile nodded over her cup. “I’ve heard of you. Not very many nice things. Are you here to kill all the gods again?”

“I hardly killed all of them,” I said. “Besides, I’m merely here to satisfy my curiosity.”

“Are you now? I think I recall the horror stories saying something similar.”

I shrugged and finally let my disguise fall. “Horror is subjective. I was merely doing some science.”

“I wasn’t there, so I can hardly argue the point,” Chamomile said. “Are you going to break past this gate too?”

“You could always unlock it for me,” I said.

“I could,” she agreed. “But I’m not sure if it’s a good idea yet. Why are you here?”

“To satisfy my curiosity, of course,” I said.

She eyed me for a long time, occasionally sipping at her tea. “I don’t believe you,” she said at last. “You might have told yourself that that’s why you’ve come, but there’s more to it than that, I’m sure. What are you curious about?”

“Mostly I want to know how the new gods are handling things,” I said. “And whether or not you’re responsible for the changes in the system.”

“I could satisfy both questions,” she said. “The first by saying that things are good now, but they haven’t always been so. And the second by saying that those changes likely were our fault, but moreso yours.”

“Oh?”

“You left things in a bit of a state,” was all she said on that matter. “Are you satisfied?”

I looked to the gate, at its golden gilding and beautiful carvings. “No, I’m not,” I said. “I still wish to see what’s on the other side.”

“Why?”

I tilted my head to the side. That was a good question. Chamomile seemed decent enough. Did that satisfy my need to know how the gods of this era were? Did I need to inspect each and every one to be satisfied? How far was I willing to go to please my curiosity?

The answer, as always, was ‘one more step.’ But here I hesitated.

If Chamomile was right and the loss of the system was my fault, then perhaps I should take that as a lesson and stop interfering so much.

“How long have you been a goddess for?” I asked. It was a simple question, the equivalent of small talk. Something to let me think.

“A millennia or so,” Chamomile said. “At least, that’s as far back as my memories go.”

“Young,” I said.

“Most of us are,” she admitted. “Most of the old gods are gone.”

“Most of them?” I asked. “Are there any left?”

“One or two,” she said rather vaguely. “Some of them came together and created the Five Fonts. That allowed us to grow as quickly as we have.”

I frowned, then did a bit of mental math. In my day, the pantheon was rather fixed. Oh, sure, there was always a bit of drama between one god and another. Someone was always sleeping with someone else’s wife, or their prized cattle. Gods would do as gods did.

Still, most gods were old. Ancient. They had been around for tens of thousands of years. The current pantheon was far younger, and yet they were... from what I could tell of Chamomile, nearing the strength of some of the weaker gods of the old pantheon.

How?

The numbers didn’t quite add up. “What are the Five Fonts?”

Chamomile hesitated. She poured herself another cup of tea and drank it in an unladylike gulp. “It’s a source of divine power. The last of the former pantheon, minor gods all, came together and built the Five Fonts as a way to ensure that the next generation could grow strong in time to protect and guide the world.”

“Interesting,” I said. “And how do these fonts work?”

“Do you not have enough power?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Perhaps I do. But I will never have enough knowledge.” Perhaps that was also the answer to my question, or rather, Chamomile’s. I would only ever be satisfied when I had all of the ability to know everything, and at that point, why even bother. It wasn’t so much the knowledge that interested me, I supposed, it was the chase, the methodology, the experimentation, the solving of the complex riddles of life, the universe and everything.

I didn’t want to know, I wanted to chase the knowledge.

“Oh hohoho,” I chuckled.

‘What is it?” Chamomile asked.

“Perhaps there is something to this Path. It made me realize something I already knew.”

One of her delicate eyebrows rose. “What’s that?”

“Oh, nothing too brilliant, I’m afraid. All these years and I’m still something of a fool. I think I’ll be knocking at that gate now.”

The goddess sighed. “There’s no persuading you not to?” she asked.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I gave up the chase so soon,” I said.

The goddess nodded. “To each their domain,” she said before she pulled a lacquered box from the grass near her and started to put her tea set away. “Give me a moment, and I’ll open the gate for you. I will warn you though, there are two other gods within. I am a peaceful goddess, of tea and cordiality. These two may not take your approach so lightly.”

“Noted,” I said. “And I appreciate the warning.”

She rose to her feet, patted down her dress which had remained unstained despite laying on the grass, then she started towards the gate. “I’ll open the path,” she said. ‘You have been polite so far. May I ask that you keep such restraint going forward?”

“I will certainly try,” I said. “It wouldn’t do for a guest to be rude.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

A touch of her hand to the gold and jade gate and the entire thing shuddered and opened with the weight of something imbued with powerful magics. It revealed a garden, with trimmed hedges and small statuaries hidden around flower alcoves. In the middle of this garden was a gazebo of sorts, with a peaked roof and marble pillars keeping it up.

I noticed benches set along gravel paths and a small pond to one side with a flock of herons staring at large koi darting in the waters.

The entire place was suffused with divine magic so thick I imagined it would be hard for a mortal to even breathe.

I wondered if this was the place where my curiosity would be sated.

***