Next to Godliness

A deimos perspective on religion; a brief glimpse of two characters rather than a true chapter or short story.

"Have you ever gone outside Helakdemas, Adram?" Lerion asked of the magus.

The wizened figure craned his head up from his journal where he had been furiously scribbling some notes or another. "I must admit, no, I have not."

The former professor tugged at his lengthy beard, examining the Imperator. The famed general had grown thinner, though the man's stern and piercing gaze had never dimmed. He had come on another of his inspections, and it was of no surprise that the commander was clearly bored. Adramelech could never understand why the general kept insisting on coming if all he was going to do was peak over his shoulders like some impatient lad.

Lerion picked up a small wooden figurine. It was balled at every joint normally found on the human body. He began arranging the limbs of the tiny mannequin in varying poses, arching the arms back and moving the feet forward as if it held a sword.

"Do you know what they believe, the others?" Lerion referred to the people of the other nations. "In Etone, they believe in doom."

Adram did not bother to take his gaze off the latest formulas he vicariously erased from the notebook. "Doom, you say?" He began rewriting select variables, but now they didn't balance correctly. He crossed them out, thought a moment, then erased the rest too.

"Yes. During my exploration and conquest of the continent." The Imperator looked upwards and away as if nostalgic. "The nomads say that no matter what one does in life, all that awaits them after death is a dim, gloomy place. All souls, no matter how greedy or just, how wicked or heroic, end up there when they die." Lerion pushed the hands of the little figurine together, curling them around its waist.

"Some of them assert that the greatest of heroes do not completely share this fate." he continued. "They earn the right to go elsewhere, to green lush fields where they are allowed to drink from a mystical river that returns them to life."

Adram busily chewed on an eraser, too distant in thought from its bland and musky taste. "Doesn't sound that bad after all."

Lerion chuckled. "You would think that, but such a reward isn't for everyday men like you or I. It is reserved only for those of mythic proportion. And even then, those that drink of the river's waters awake in a time far removed from their own, with all their memories and personality completely erased."

The Imperator pulled the figure's arms back to its sides, running a finger over its smooth, featureless face. "The 'reborn' might as well be different people altogether. It doesn't really change anyone's fate, those who have passed on can never return again."

The magus' whirling pencil strokes came to a soft halt, and he pulled himself upright with a cough. "How poignant. Are you now doubtful of all this?" He waved a hand over the numerous papers, diagrams, and open books scattered over the work table.

The Imperator shot him a glare. "I would not base all my opinions on the thoughts of just one belief system."

He stepped towards the window, where the orange late-afternoon sun still beamed through the glass. Its glow gave the figurine in his hands a pleasant sheen, drawing out the highlights in its wooden textures. "In Helias they believe that the sun that rises each morning is the same sun that set the night before."

Adramelech never looked up from his writing. "How fascinating. Do they have proof of that?"

The commander turned around. "I severely doubt it. But it doesn't matter, because they have faith. They have Providence."

Lerion raised the little model's arms and pushed its hands together, pushing down its head to look rather penitent. "The helians say those who live according to their gods' wishes will enjoy paradise with them in the afterlife, dwelling amidst the clouds and the sun itself in the sky. Eventually, when the end times come the gods will resurrect all those living with them in full body and mind. It will be as if they never died, but this time they will be immortal and living perfectly with their gods back on earth."

Adram had turned around and was rummaging through piles of books. He was glancing through their covers only to toss them away to the sides, where other piles of tomes steadily grew. "Is that what they tell their children?" he said without even turning around.

He grabbed at another tome, looked it over, and then spun around to dump it into the work table. It landed with a loud thud, scattering a couple papers. "It's one thing for the young to lie to their parents, but the other way around? That seems inane."

Lerion shrugged. "It is a justification for the harshness and cruelty of life."

The magus cracked open the book and began flipping through its pages, eyes darting back and forth across its pages. "It sounds more like self-delusion."

"Exactly," Lerion muttered, bending the little figure's elbows and knees as if it were mounted. "In Tyr'aldric the barbarians don't preoccupy themselves with trying to know an afterlife they cannot yet experience. Instead they tend to focus on the present. They call it wyrd."

The Imperator gave a slight smirk when he noticed the researcher's brow rise at that. Adramelech peeked at him. "So what would this 'wyrd' be?"

"There is no overarching benevolence or malevolence in life, nor an ultimate afterlife," explained Lerion. "There is only a sequence of events, each directly or indirectly causing the next, casually bound up to a single point of observation. It is what is in the process of happening."

He looked over the little poseable figurine, then held it over the work table. Without a further word, he opened his fingers and let it fall. The wooden model struck the table headfirst and then bounced once onto a nearby stack of papers, toppling some over the side. The papers began slipping over the edge, first individually, then all at once. The figurine, still atop the remaining stack of papers, fell off with them.

"The daldrics sound quite pragmatic. No wonder we liked them" Adramelech commented as he slid the book he had just been reading into the spot formerly taken by the papers. He turned back to the book piles, sorting through them again.

"But sometimes," he began, "things just can't be related." He bent over as he grabbed and tossed some more books away. "Trying to do so eventually just destroys all definition of causality."

The magus swung around to read the book covers in sunlight, when his hip knocked over a nearby mountain of tomes. He backed away in an attempt to keep his feet from becoming buried, only to knock into another pile. The magus let out a small yelp as books swarmed over his legs, and as he tried to step out of the thick of it he slipped and plopped right down into the mess. To Lerion's dismay the knockdowns only revealed an actual bookcase that had been behind everything, obviously stuffed to such capacity that books jutted out at every conceivable angle.

"Ah, there it is," Adramelech remarked, sounding rather pleased with himself. He reached up and yanked out a dust-covered grimoire from the shelves, not without some noticeable effort. Holding his prize, he pulled himself to his feet and returned to the work table, setting the book down front and center.

"Sometimes," the magus grinned as he rubbed his hands expectantly, "things just happen." He turned his attention back to the book. "This should help things greatly. I just remembered this is where I kept my notes on organic magic."

Lerion narrowed his eyes. "You only just bring this out now?"

Adramelech looked hurt. "I did not foresee needing my old biophysical research for a matter concerning the spirit. But, when there are difficulties, one must become resourceful."

The Imperator opened his mouth to chide the scholar, but only a series of wheezing coughs erupted from his lungs. He slapped a hand over his mouth and whirled around, letting the chest-wracking spasms go through him. He panted when they finally stopped, and with trepidation he glanced at his palm.

Only clear spittle. He sighed in relief, and discreetly wiped his hand on a handkerchief.

Lerion made his way to the other side of the room and gingerly set himself upon a modest stool, letting his body recollect himself. Adramelech only continued to bore his way through the book. The general didn't blame the man, this was far from the first time such fits had crossed him.

"Do you know," the general began to rasp. He cleared his thought, then began again. "What the savages in the Teros'ide believe in?"

"In all honestly I'm surprised to hear you telling me that they can talk," Adram wryly retorted.

The Imperator grunted, readjusting atop the stool. "They are primitive without a doubt, and perhaps far from intelligent. But they are exceedingly cunning."

"You speak as if there's a difference."

"Oh, there most certainly is," he said, arcing his chest outwards and stretching back his arms until his back loudly cracked.

"Regardless," he continued, "While they do believe in spirits, they are not personified like the other pantheons. The jungles they dwell in simply exist, as do the swamps and the predators. They are forces of nature, not so much to be bargained or reasoned with, but just respected."

The magus scribbled down something from the tome, eyes shifting back and forth from page to paper as the back of his pencil spun. "But there are spirits, you said."

"Yes, but not as sentient entities. It is just the lumped collection of the flow of the systems," Lerion explained. "They speak of the direction of that flow, and it does undeniably have a direction, like it were an intention. Trees grow, not out of conscious desire, but simply as a means to exist. The swamps swell and sink with the inflow from the tides."

"I see. Such physical systems go about their processes; at least until something interrupts them, I presume?"

The Imperator shifted atop the stool. "Indeed."

Adram flipped ahead several pages and began copying again. "So does that mean the tribes there subscribe to something akin to the daldrics' wyrd?"

"An astute assumption, Adram, but actually quite wrong," Lerion replied. "The tribes do not believe in any systematic order or flow in terms of a greater fate. Individual systems do have an intention, or at least inherent flow, but there are no greater strings being pulled."

The magus turned to him. "This all sounds rather sophisticated for the people you've described, Imperator."

Lerion allowed himself a slight chuckle. "It actually makes logical sense when you remember who you're dealing with. Each tribe is trying to survive in an environment set to overwhelm and consume them. However, besides contending with their surroundings they also compete with, and ultimately antagonize, each other."

His tone became quite serious. "When you have a number of intentional directions all vying against one another, like multiple rivers all streaming into a single pool, you have pure chaos. Even though each individual intentional flow is predictable, once you mash them together in pure opposition with one another there are few, if any, patterns that can be gleamed from the erupting conflict."

Adram stood straight, tapping his pencil against his chin thoughtfully. "Ah, now that makes more sense. It's just like the theory. But there ultimately are patterns."

"There are," Lerion conceded, "but on the scale of the jungle such emerging systems are not felt at the...mortal scale, if you will."

"I suppose not." The magus set down his pencil, glancing at the book. "But what of this, then?" His eyes widened, and that sparkle of wonder began to shine in Adramelech's face. "In principle, if this worked, then one could experience such time scales. One could witness firsthand such emerging orders..."

Lerion slid off the stool, stretching his legs as he ambled over to the scholar. "Yes, Adram. And that is what sets the deimos apart from the others."

The Imperator laid his hands upon the work table, atop all the scattered notes and hastily scribbled diagrams and sigils. "We do not invest in idealistic hope or despair for what-may-be, nor do we resign ourselves to how the world just appears to be."

The sun outside was setting now, the shadows of the Black Forest's trees growing long and stretching into the room. The sky outside was beginning to adopt that beautiful purple shade that only comes in twilight.

"We do not just hope or accept. We aspire for better, and then we create better. We realized long ago that pantheons only existed as our first attempt to try and control the world around us. When we found we could control the world without their intercession, we didn't need them anymore."

Adramelech reached down, picking up the wooden figurine with a sigh. He set it on the work table, its bent legs letting it "sit" there on the edge. "I like to fancy the idea of gods not as omnipotent beings watching over us, but just as explorers to a new horizon who miraculously lost their way."

Lerion smirked. "Clever."

The magus gave a lazy shrug. "I always used to tell my lab assistants at the university that if all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."

The Imperator gave a hearty laugh at that. "Ah, Adram. I think that is exactly what sets us apart from everyone else."

"What's that?" the scholar called out as his compatriot made his way to the door.

Lerion replied, "That just because we don't need gods doesn't mean we shouldn't try."

Author's Note

I usually proofread my works, however as always I'm sure there are typos and syntax errors. I appreciate any and all notices of that, and will work to correct those. If I haven't do know that I did acknowledge your notice and try implementing it, but found that it detracted from the effect I wanted and so omitted it.