E06 - Ch 27: Gods Awaken

The moon shone bright and round in the dark sky, and the boy who was soon to be a man slept tremulously in the small cabin below.

Then, a shadow appeared in the sky. The figure stood dark even against the moon’s light. It had the form of the man, his face, his shoulders, his arms, his body. But what was inside was nothing like a man, and upon his head sprouted curling ivory horns.

Haze gathered across the sky, rolling winds pushing in the thickening mist and covering the moon, leaving only a circular opening directly above the boy's home, at the very edge of which the shadow stood.

There was no gathering of arcana, no change in the physical world, but he could sense it all the same. He stood atop the clouds and spread his arms, his body feeling the rare sensation of longing.

"Ah," he sighed, looking across the stars and moon. "What a beautiful night for heaven's door to open."

"Yagghh," a voice yawned from the other side of the wide opening. "Great Goddesses, that was a good nap."

The shadow found a small figure seated atop the clouds, rubbing sleepy eyes with the back of her nailed hand. On her right shoulder was a small white cat with black paws. One paw was clutched to the girl's shoulder and the other was also rubbing at its eyes, looking as if it too had just awoken. Then he noticed the pointed ears sprouting from the girl's head and the curving tail that swayed back and forth behind her sitting position.

The shadow's emotions were ancient immovable things that were slow to change. But upon seeing the two cats he felt a pang of annoyance echo upward from the chambers of his being.

"Miazu, Goddess of Felines," he said solemnly. "What brings you here?"

It was the little white cat on her shoulder that seemed to hear him first. It froze, one unrubbed eye widening while the other was still covered by a paw. Then that paw started rapidly patting the girl on the cheek, who was in the middle of another long yawn.

"Mia, Mia, Mia, look! There's a demon here!"

"What!?" The girl snapped awake, leaping to all fours with outstretched hands and feet, her tail becoming tall and bushy. "Where!?"

"There! Across from us!" hissed the small white cat. "I think it's Demon Prince Zilkrion!"

Miazu squinted across the circular opening in the clouds at the shadow and shook her head. "No way, Zilkrion is uglier than a year-old hairball, and this one's kind of alright looking. It must be Sakrion. Sakrion, is that you!?"

Zilkrion stood mutely for a long moment as clouds passed beneath his feet.

"Why are you here, Miazu?"

"I'm here to see the show, of course!" Miazu was standing again, and she leaned forward now, peering at Zilkrion. "Hey Sakrion, you're looking a little worse for wear. What happened to your pretty face?"

"I am Zilkrion."

Miazu pointed a finger at him. "I knew it! It's Zilkrion!"

"I told you!" hissed the small white cat on her shoulder.

Miazu turned to her companion and raised a hand to cover her mouth. "You don't think he heard that hairball comment, do you?"

"I don't know," the small white cat hissed back. "But he's a demon, so he probably won't say anything about it."

"I don't like what he's done with his hair."

"Me neither. Someone should lick it for him."

"Why are you really here?" Zilkrion said, and he found his voice surprisingly impatient.

Miazu stretched, her hands reaching out across the floor of clouds, and she pushed her bottom high into the sky, her tail arcing forward. The small white cat on her back made the same motion.

Zilkrion waited.

Miazu stood again and grinned, two hands resting on her hips. "To prevent you from doing evil, of course."

The answer did not surprise Zilkrion. It was what he had assumed the moment he rested his eyes on the Goddess of Felines.

"Miazu, are you not curious about what lies beyond this world? Do you not wish to learn of the Overgod?"

"Curious? Me? Of course I'm curious. I’m a cat! Why? Do you know something?"

"Do you know why the doors of heaven are opening?"

"Yeah, a soul image is being resurrected."

"Indeed, it is an opportunity, Miazu. It is rare for a soul image to enter this world, but it is even rarer for one to be resurrected."

Miazu scratched her ears. "Huh? What's the difference?"

"Intact soul images, if they arrive in this world at all, come with the soul when it enters the child’s body in the womb. But this soul image is being pulled out of a soul that has already arrived in this world seventeen years prior. That is profound. We cannot access a soul image when it is born, for it enters the world through the roots of causality as all souls do. But resurrection requires the opening of heaven’s doors. If we move quickly enough, the resurrected soul image may yet still contain the latent memories of the in-between, the place where souls go before they are reassigned—"

Zilkrion paused and waited. A puff of cloud had risen up from the cloud floor beside Miazu and she had begun jumping and swiping at it with her hand, the small cat on her shoulder also making an attempt with a paw. After a moment, the puff dissolved into the air and Miazu turned her head back to Zilkrion.

"Huh, were you saying something?"

"The soul image that shall soon be resurrected may contain latent memories of the Overgod. The memories will not last for long, but at the moment of resurrection, if we were to capture and consume that soul image, we may yet discover them."

"We?"

"That is what I offer you, Miazu. We may be enemies, but we both thirst for divine knowledge. Join me in this endeavor, and I will share its bounty."

"The soul image gets destroyed when you consume it, doesn't it?"

"It is just an image, Miazu. The soul and life below shall live on, untouched."

Miazu made a brushing motion with her hand. "Nah, I'll pass. If the heavens want to resurrect a soul image, we should probably just let them do their thing."

"Do not waste this opportunity. Who knows how many centuries or millennia will pass before there is another resurrection."

"If you're that desperate to meet the afterlife, why don't you, you know… just,” Miazu tilted her head, “die?"

Zilkrion said nothing.

"Oh right! Because given all the bad stuff you’ve done, you'll probably be reincarnated as a ladybug or something."

"Probably a scorpion," the little white cat said.

"No way," Miazu said. "He's definitely the ladybug type."

Zilkrion frowned. "Do not act as if you do not fear death yourself."

"I don't really…" Miazu said, rubbing her forehead thoughtfully as her tail swung from side to side. "But what if I didn't come back as a cat next time?” Miazu’s voice became filled with dread. “What if… what if I came back as the God of Labradors or something?" Miazu buried her face in her hands. "Ah! I don't even want to think about it!"

The white cat patted her head consolingly. "Don't worry, Mia. The universe is not that cruel."

"So be it,” Zilkrion said with finality. “Then I shall capture the soul image myself."

At that moment, a thin beam of iridescent light had shot down from the stars above, hitting the hut below and the boy within.

Zilkrion moved with ferocity and reached out toward the light with his taloned hand and—paused as the point of a golden blade that seemed to cover half the sky materialized before his right eye.

"Don't even think about it, Zilky," Miazu said, her hand outstretched, gripping a hilt that fit the small feline god's hand and yet was attached to the monstrous blade.

"Don't even think about it!" the little white cat on her shoulder repeated.

Zilkrion bared his teeth. "You would break the Concordat over a single soul image?"

"I'm not breaking anything. You are. And you'd better bet your tail that your head's coming off the moment you do. Goodbye, demon prince, hello ladybug."

"Ladybug!" chimed the little white cat. "Or scorpion."

"This soul image exists outside of the world, and thus outside the Concordat. There are no terms for such an event, and because it comes from the heavens, my actions shall not count as interference."

"He's playing fast and loose with the treaty!" the little white cat hissed to its master.

"It's okay," Miazu whispered back. "We'll let him take it, then play fast and loose with the treaty ourselves and send him on his way to his ladybug life! Then we'll be free to kill as many demons as we like again, and it won't even be our fault the Concordat ended!"

"Oh, Mia, that's a great plan!"

Zilkrion weighed his options. The window of opportunity was closing, but the presence of the feline goddess presented a real threat. He did not fear Miazu, but she was too unpredictable, and the Cat’s Claw was one of the Five Golden Blades. It had the power to damage anything it touched. Anything. Even Zilkrion's immortal skin was not immune.

He desired the soul image’s knowledge of the Overgod, but it was not as if a soul image would have all the answers. It would have only received a glimpse and likely presented no information greater than what Zilkrion already knew. With great reluctance, he slowly lowered his hand.

"I will not forget this, Miazu."

Without another sound, the shadow was gone from the night sky.

✣ ✣ ✣

"Whew!" Miazu let out a huge sigh and dropped to the cloud floor on her back, spread out like a starfish, the monstrous blade shrinking with golden light to a tiny thing that slid beneath one of the nails on her left hand.

"We should stop cutting things so close, Mia," Dipper said, coming to sit next to her head and pawing some of the sweat from Mia's brow.

"Well, I didn't think he was going to still try his luck after I was already standing across from him. How disrespectful!"

“Very disrespectful.”

“And it’s not my fault I thought he looked like his brother. He should have taken it as a compliment.”

When Dipper, who always replied to Miazu's complaints, did not say anything, she turned, finding the small cat's luminous eyes looking past her.

"What's wrong?"

"The resurrection… something's not right."

Miazu craned her head toward the light. Then she saw it. The current of heaven's light was shrinking.

"That damned demon! He messed with the signal!"

"The beam is already fading,” Dipper said. “The soul image will be pulled out of the soul core then sucked right back in at this point."

"We've got to go bring it out."

Dipper's mouth dropped open as he turned to his master, revealing little white fangs and a pink tongue. "That's very dangerous, Mia! And we don't know what kind of unintended consequences it'll cause."

"What are you talking about?” Mia said, standing again. “I'll just convert our form to the astral plane and head down the opening to his inner world made by the signal. We dive past his subconscious, reach the soul core, nab the image, and bring him back up. That’ll probably cost most of our arcana, but we should be fine as long as we do it while the signal is still open, or else we might get trapped down there for good."

"That's all very dangerous, Mia!"

"Yeah, but we can't let a demon get one over on us, can we?"

"No, of course, we can't."

Dipper leaped onto Miazu's shoulder, and the Goddess of Felines began to weave tendrils of golden light around her body.

"Let's go!" She leaped down into the opening, her golden arcana condensing her as she merged with the iridescent beam.

They fell through the sky and never felt the wind. They were already astral, diving with the beam through the cabin roof and into the boy’s chest.

They entered the boy’s inner world, falling through yet another sky toward a dark ocean that stretched as far as the eye could see, with only a small speck of an island in the distance. But they moved within the iridescent beam, which in the boy’s inner world appeared as a massive column of light, and they were headed for the waters.

"It's going to be wet!" Dipper cried in protest. "Meow!"

"The subconscious is always wet!” Mia replied. “Meow!"

They broke into its surface, cool waters pressing back their fur and whiskers. And onward they continued, deeper and deeper into the depths.

But unlike a true ocean, the waters began to grow less dense until they were diving through mist and then nothingness.

Suddenly, a blue sphere emerged in the infinite darkness, and it grew in size as they approached. Smaller lights began to appear all around them, and there were many smaller orbs spinning around the sphere, and the closer they got to it, the bigger the sphere became. The beam struck into its center. But already the column of light was beginning to fade.

Dipper's eyes were wide with awe as he stared at the blue light and the other speckles of light in the darkness around them. "This looks like… a solar system… a universe…"

"It is a universe!" Mia replied.

"It's really true then… worlds within worlds…"

"There's no time to marvel at metaphysics right now, Dipper! We gotta nab the guy and get going!"

"Let's go!"

The sphere had become gigantic in size, and everything else was in darkness except for the other orbs in the far, far distance. But Miazu had the eyes of a cat. A divine cat.

"There!"

She pointed at an empty space and pressed her golden arcana out of her feet, kicking off.

"Where are you going!" Dipper said, feeling himself being pulled in the opposite direction that Miazu had pointed.

"I gotta save my arcana!" Miazu said. "We'll rotate with the soul's orbit and catch him on the way around. Come on!"

They swung around the blue sphere with incredible speed, pushed by Mia's arcana and pulled by the soul’s orbital strength.

Then Dipper saw the unconscious body of a man floating in the far distance. "He's already being spun back toward the core! The signal wasn’t strong enough! We've got to move!"

"I know!"

The sphere tugged at their bodies, whipping them around toward the man, who was also traveling at a similar speed. Mia kicked out a burst of arcana, she had to be very careful now as her arcavoir had begun to run low. Entering a foreign inner world was a costly feat, even for a god. As she neared, she stretched out her hand, but her speed suddenly increased, and the body tumbled away out of reach as they passed by.

“We missed him,” Dipper cried.

"Meow,” Mia cursed. “We’re moving faster now that we’re closer to the soul core. We’ll give it another go!”

"There's no time!" Dipper said, his head turned, watching the body falling against the surface of the soul core.

“Yes, there is!” Miazu pressed her arcana out in a great flash, bringing them around with even greater speed, their own bodies coming within feet of the soul’s surface.

“Ohh…” Dipper held even tighter to Mia’s shoulder as their speed increased. “We're going to be cutting it very, very close!”

"I'm going to need your help, Dipper!" Mia called as they came around again.

"I'll do my best!"

On the horizon, the body was already halfway into the soul core, the head still above the surface, parting soul matter as it surfed.

Mia stretched out her hand again. "We can't get too close or we’ll be gone with him. Help me!"

Dipper climbed down Miazu's left arm and pulled, unleashing his own arcana, while Miazu reached her hand toward the rapidly submerging body. Its head now slipped under the blue surface of the soul, one hand still above, cutting a path against the soul's opaque surface as all three of them spun around the sphere.

"Almost!" Miazu called out, reaching closer to the rapidly submerging hand.

Dipper held on with all his might, claws buried in Miazu's skin, not daring to let her down too fast while also fighting against the soul's pull.

The man's hand fell under the surface of the soul, but just then, Miazu, with her hand coated in golden light, reached in and clasped his hand. She pulled hard, drawing the man out.

"Let's go!" she shouted. She and Dipper both pressed with all their arcana, pushing back upward toward the iridescent beam that they had come through, dragging the man in tow.

Neither Miazu nor Dipper spoke now. They pressed with all their strength and the last of their arcana as time was quickly running out. They could feel the vibrations of the heavenly beam coming to an end, and it was their only path out. But there was no use in thinking of anything else but their success, and so they pressed on, pushing up into dark waters.

✣ ✣ ✣

A boy sat huddled at the edge of the water, his legs held in his arms. In the distance, he could see the column of light that had fallen from the sky and upon the waters. Then something seemed to emerge from the ocean at its center. He saw a cute girl with a small white cat on her shoulder, gliding down with the unconscious body of a man in her arms.

She smiled at him as she flew out toward him from the beam. She glided down and set the body of the man onto the shore before him. Then, with a quick wave and flash of golden light, she leaped into the sky, bursting after the column of light that had begun to trail off upward.

Just as the light disappeared, he heard a high-pitched voice shout, "Mia! We've really got to stop cutting things so c—"

Then they were gone, and all that was left was the boy's gloom and the man on the shore.

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✣✣✣ END OF EPISODE SIX ✣✣✣

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