Dark clouds gathered in the depths of the Firmament of the Gods’ abyss. My field of view darkened as the air around me turned stagnant. Then, a section of cloud began to glow. A low rumble reverberated throughout the entire realm as a beam of light fell upon the pyramid-shaped temple. Far from ordinary light, it released enough divine magic power to form a dozen gods.
“The cog of the pillager is implanted in every god,” I said. “By rotating that cog, the pillager had been able to create gods that only obeyed order. This was Misfit Graham’s theory, but he was unable to see the cogs for himself.”
The gods themselves were unable to notice the existence of the cog inside them. And if the man who took Ceris Voldigoad’s head had also been unable to see them, then these cogs were a considerable feat indeed.
“He probably found it even more baffling because he couldn’t see it,” I mused. “Perhaps the cogs are completely integrated into order, dissolved into the world without the notice of those living here. Graham developed this theory and became fascinated with it. And so he developed a magic to prove the pillager’s existence.”
Graham had said it himself—that he wanted to see if he could create an Equis. That he wanted to know what was in the abyss of the world. His usual nonsense was a veil hiding his true intentions.
“Through the Selection Trial, gods that perished had their order stored in the pledge jewel rings to prevent order from being disrupted. The proxy who survived until the end would be given the power of their Selection God—the power to consume the gods invited to the Selection Trial, and to possess multiple orders.”
Graham had zeroed in on the system of the Selection Trial.
“Graham altered the God of Balance using Gijerica and the God of Frenzy, rewriting the order to change the Selection Trial. Instead of storing the power of perished gods in the pledge jewel ring, they gathered in the fetus inside the Overlord Veaflare.”
Many gods had perished in that battle: the Water Burial God, Afrasiata; the God of Magic Sight, Janeldefok; the Barrier God, Linorolos; the God of Frenzy, Aganzon; the God of Gospel, Doldred; the Gluttony God, Galvadorion; and the God of Traces, Revalschned. And there may be even more gods that had perished without my knowledge. The increase in the Selected was just another method of inviting more gods to be destroyed.
“If the power of the gods was gathered into one, the nonexistent Almighty Radiance would be born. But Graham wasn’t interested in Equis’s omnipotence.”
To a misfit like Graham, arranging the birth of Equis was basically an act of suicide. But even so, he wanted to know.
“All the gods together form a single order. The cogs of the pillager control each god individually. The cogs are invisible and have no will of their own. If they had a will, they would have been noticed long ago. The gods perceive this cog as their own order.”
They couldn’t speak, and couldn’t be seen. Thus, it was only natural to assume the cogs were the gods’ own inner impulses.
“If there truly are cogs that cannot be seen, then it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the order of this entire world has been formed by the pillager. They alone are the one deciding who the misfits and purists are.”
So what had to be done to see them? The answer was awfully simple.
“Graham gathered the gods’ powers in a single place, each one with a cog implanted within them, and fed them to an unborn fetus. If all the gods together were designed to form a single order, then naturally, each of their cogs should fit against each other. And if they fit against each other, then collecting a large number of them should eventually result in a single clear mind that could move by itself. This,” I concluded, “was Graham’s hypothesis.”
Although each cog individually had no will of their own, they were all pointed in the same direction of order. In other words, they did have a will, but divided so finely among them that it seemed as if they didn’t. This also was part of Graham’s theory—he must have sensed some kind of will in the overall order of the world that the gods were aiming for. All of his experimentation was in service of trying to prove this. But because he couldn’t perceive the cogs, he didn’t even know himself if they actually existed or if he was just imagining everything.
But knowing that man, that wouldn’t have stopped him from trying. And so the entire world was dragged into his unhinged magic experiment. Perhaps that way of thinking was why he had been branded a misfit.
“Through Aeges’s spear, you were sent from Veaflare’s womb to another dimension. But you didn’t die.”
A fetus couldn’t survive outside its mother’s womb. That was the law of nature, but there were exceptions—such as myself. The only reason why Equis hadn’t been born yet was so more divine power could be gathered for their birth.
“You used the legion of divine powers within you to reach the Firmament of the Gods. It was probably from here that you spoke to Graham,” I said.
In all likelihood, Graham had ensured that once Equis was born through Gijerica the god would have a way for their voice to reach him. Equis was formed by cogs that couldn’t be seen with the Eyes, while Graham possessed a source of nearly nothing—the two were connected through a magic link of nihility. Equis had used that to speak to me, which is why I had heard that voice coming from my source; they had spoken to me through Graham’s nihility.
“You created Vade, made him the God of Culling, and had him destroy the gods. After all, the more gods destroyed, the more power you’d gather through the altered Selection Trial, right? Since despite all the perished gods, the order on earth hasn’t actually changed at all.”
The order of the gods complemented and supported each other. Like the Goddess of Destruction and the God of Demise, and the Goddess of Creation, the Goddess of Birth, and the Heavenly Father. Just like how taking down the Goddess of Destruction didn’t completely erase destruction from the world, one god’s ruin wasn’t enough for the whole order to collapse.
However, everything was now definitely further from destruction. But this time, not even the slightest change was felt when the God of Culling destroyed the gods in the Celestial Canopy. The gods had perished, but their order was maintained. And that was what had reminded me of the Selection Trial.
“Ultimately, you wanted the Four Principles to be destroyed. So you could make their order your own.”
The only reason Vade’s Behelius had been able to imprison Anahem so easily was because the cog in Anahem held his body in place. It wasn’t because Vade had better magic than me.
“The reason why you made Vade do it was because the cogs don’t have enough control over the gods to force them to suicide. They only exist to make them obey their order and fulfill their objective.”
The cogs had avoided detection until now thanks to that lack of power. They had been designed to be unnoticeable by humans or demons. If they had been capable of forcing the gods into something as drastic as suicide, they wouldn’t have been mistaken for order to begin with.