[-=Nox=-]

“I see you’ve got yourself some weapons of divine-power.” I nodded at June's sword. “Did you take it from the knight?”

She wagged her tail, nodding.

“Well done. Good on you for taking high level opponents. Strike that sword into this desk so its blade sticks out of it.” I pointed my manacles at the mahogany office desk.

“Sorry, Goddess. There’s a contract on my soul that says that I’m not allowed to damage the ship, or steal anything from here.”

“Who dares bind the soul of my acolyte with contracts?!” I growled.

“Captain Nicodemus Rim Schwartz.” June lowered her eyes. "I have to serve him as a personal maid while I am on the ship."

“I shall deal with this fiendish human soon.” I promised her. “Okay, relocate the belt and the sword onto me then, it’s a bit too big for you anyway.”

She nodded, belting the scabbard with the sword onto my waist. I pulled the sword out, and struck it so it stuck out sideways from the desk, then I accelerated my blood and swung my manacle chain at the sword. The sword flashed with power as one of the links in the manacles snapped in half. I moved my arms apart and swung the sword back and forth getting used to its weight in my arms. “Excellent.”

“Sit and recharge your Shadow.” I told June. She obeyed. I went around the cabin, smashing chest and drawer locks with the almighty magic sword. The sword was brimming with power - wood and metal melted in its path like butter.

I found a bracelet and a necklace of power, a couple of basic power up rings and a pair of prisoner manacles. I put all of the found powerup items on myself.

Then, I bent down to Tamara and manacled her to a desk. She had a malachite ring on her finger with an enormous emerald gemstone covered in control runes. I pried it off her hand and put it on. My perception suddenly started to bounce all over the ship. Damn! This was a very powerful and handy piece of magic.

“Great. This should increase my abilities a bit.” I grinned. June smiled at me from the couch. She was happy to watch me dismantle the Rimmer ship. Too happy, in fact. The binding contracts in her soul were definitely dragging her down for a long time.

I discovered a bunch of sandwiches and drinks in a food storage compartment and gave half of them and a bottle of spirits to June, while enjoying the rest myself.

Apparently it didn’t count as a problem if someone else fed her using the ship’s supplies. I demolished a few more containers, finding gold, gems and a Delarcian diadem of charisma which I put on my acolyte’s head. I was already far too charismatic to need such an item.

I spent a few hours exploring the ship with aid of June’s comments. Guided by her, I unlocked doors, smashed chests and confiscated things from the Rimmer crew. I needed as much extra power as I could possibly harvest. June wasn’t allowed to steal stuff, but she could tell me where the nice things were. By the end of it I was utterly covered in misc powerup jewelry, rings on all of my fingers, necklaces on my neck, bracelets on my feet and arms. I relocated all of the other non-magical loot into the office of Captain Nicodemus, declaring it my new temple.

According to June, Nicodemus had left Tamara in charge of the ship while the other Rimmers were out selling goods and looking for new mages to sign up to the Academia. Nicodemus himself was busy discussing some contract with the Legate in Kleinburg’s town hall.

The ship wasn’t what it seemed. Using my tongue and the Searcher pearl we found secret storage areas. Therein, I discovered a whole pile of Sextant slave collars. I immediately went back to put one on Tamara. I didn’t want to waste any more of my precious Void mana on her. She wasn’t dark enough for me to work with, so I wasn’t sure if her head would explode if I shot a spell into her mouth.

A few hours had passed, during which I made June tell me everything that she knew about Yul and her adventures. I was glad that June had an excellent memory! There was a lot of interesting information in her story about my dumb human host Yul, Triumvirate of Virtue, the Rimmers and the Sextants.

A big pile of gold and jewelry now decorated the Captain’s bed. June sat in the middle of the pile of shiny things, running her fingers through the loot, making it rain gemstones and coins as she answered my questions. Evening painted the ship's portholes orange, as the black hole corona slowly started to sink behind the horizon.

“I still can’t believe that my human host thought that I was a vampire!” I rubbed my face. “What an idiot! No wonder she cancelled all of my Quests.”

“I know, right!” June giggled. “It’s okay. She thinks you’re a nature spirit now.”

“This is only marginally better than a vampire.” I sighed. “A step in the right direction maybe, but not quite there.”

“We’ll get there, I promise! Little steps. We’ll convince her that you’re an awesome Goddess! Together!” June smiled.

“Together.” I nodded, feeling unexpected warmth in my heart. June was shaping up to be an excellent acolyte. I’ve had an unnaturally long life as a divinity, had survived many acolytes and Apostles, but I felt an inexplicable, deep growing rapport with June. Perhaps it was because I was stuck for so long in a human body. Was I developing human feelings or something?

I thought about my human host and felt a small tether of belief emanating from her. Yul believed in me, thought about me as Nox, dreamed about me as she slept. I checked my list of Quests. She selected the Quest that she had understood me. Yes! Freaking finally!

I erased the rest of the threatening Quests. From this point on we would work together. I understood my human. Yul was a goody-two-shoes farmgirl who believed in Gaia, couldn't tolerate killing, and has been misled by the church of Virtue her entire life to think that the Void was evil. I could work with that. Little steps.

I was in quite a deep hole points-wise, though. It was time to dig up.

I selected myself and started to add new Quests. I looked at June. First one was easy.

Quest: Acquire a Nox Apostle who loves me with their entire heart. Reward: 3000 points.

Only 3000 points for true love? Blah!

I thought about what else I could do, then I cleared my mind and started to throw Quests at myself.

Quest: Defeat an Archmage in battle. Reward: 15’000 points per Archmage.

Quiet: Defeat the Kleinburg Triumvirate of Virtue in battle. Reward: 30’000 points.

Quest: Defeat the entire crew of the Resurgence. Reward: 15’000 points

Quest: Make all the humans of Kleinburg believe in the power of Nox. Reward: 30’000 points.

Quest: Destroy the Kleinburg Convent of the Light. Reward: 10’000 points.

Quest: Do something so incredible and earth-shattering that many humans believe in Nox. Reward: 10 points per human who believes in the power of Nox.

There. Totally reasonable goals!

“How do you feel about me, June?” I turned to my acolyte.

“Honestly? I’m really glad you made me your acolyte!” June smiled, pouring gemstones from one hand to another. “I like you!”

I scanned her feelings through the Void in her soul. She liked me, but didn’t quite love me. I was getting there!

I slid over to the bed, grabbed her hand and started to teach her the most basic void spell - darkness. I couldn't show her the circle, couldn't even weave a basic illusion without it exploding on me. I used what was available to me, I laid the pattern out on the bed using coins and gems. She was incredibly attentive and was soon practicing the spell, making the parts of the cabin dim and then pitch black while laughing like a maniac. She still couldn't believe that she was using actual Void magic to do Void spells.

I let her practice, returning to the comfort of the Captain's chair. The chair has a massage function. I relaxed as it rubbed my human back. Amazing! In the top drawer I discovered a bottle of some sort of berry wine, circa 5984. It tasted pretty damn good. I watched June practice the spell.

“While I am glad that you find happiness in learning basic Void magic and enjoying these shiny rocks and metal bits, we have far bigger problems ahead of us, acolyte.” I said, gulping down from my tasty wine bottle.

“Like what, Goddess?” She asked.

“The System I designed is decaying.” I confessed. “The orbit of the continental shards is unstable.”

“I don’t understand.” She blinked.

I pointed to a tapestry on the wall. The tapestry was woven with magical fibers. It showed an interactive map that had various flying continents labelled in order of size and importance. When I tapped each continent, an info window came up labelling major cities. I could rotate them as well. Neat.

“This was never a thing.” I said, idly spinning flying continents on the map. “Six thousand years ago, planet Earth was a sphere. One planet. All the continents were together, separated by oceans. Back when I ruled the world I had terraformed all that displeased me. I made deserts green, turned off volcanoes, carved up mountains into pyramidal temples and even hollowed out the earth to make even more room for life within it.”

“Really? Wowee!” June commented.

“Yes,” I nodded. “Using materials extracted from the Earth I created extra moons and gave them to my Archmagi to play with. The epitome of my work was the triskelion spiral of devouring. Which, as I see, has been stolen by literally everyone and made into a common tool that leeches mana out of nearby humans to power various magitech.” I sighed.

“The spiral rune in the pub, the logo of the Church of Virtue?” June asked.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “Mine was bigger. A LOT bigger. Billions of mages worked in unison under my supervision to etch a triskelion rune across the entire planet. I made it so big so that I could consume the total energy of the sun. The sun was... a star that was very close to the Earth."

June nodded. "I learned about stars in the Academia, Goddess."

"My plan was to gain absolute power over space and time, to create a magical Void engine under my control.”

“A billion is a very big number, yes?” The foxkin commented. “Must have been a big rune then?”

“The biggest rune in the world. Bigger than 100 Europas!” I nodded, tapping at the Europa continental shard on the map. “Alas, the project took too long. Most of my trusty Apostles died and their children weren’t as enthusiastic about the whole thing. They were greedy for power. I was so busy making sure that the rune worked that I didn’t pay much attention to their human needs or… feelings.”

“Ah. You worked your old minions to death and the new ones weren’t as cool.” June nodded.

“Right. I was betrayed, backstabbed by my new Archmagi and my masterpiece to turn the sun into something more useful was sabotaged. Project Eternal Night had failed. They imprisoned me in that damn spiral Labyrinth. I am assuming that after my imprisonment, the star devouring rune exploded due to a cascade failure and all of my terraforming projects had broken down, ran amok without my supervision as the Archmages warred for control of my Empire.”

“Sucky,” the foxkin pouted.

“This is what remains of my great civilization of the Void, a bunch of ruins and broken rocks floating through space around a black hole, barely held together by an uneven, nebulous field of magic.” I pointed at the map.

“...and that’s bad?” June blinked. She tried really hard to understand what I was saying, to believe me, but she was finding it rather difficult. She couldn't even begin to imagine a world that wasn’t floating shards held together by magic.

“Yeah. It won’t last. I don’t know how soon, but the world is doomed.”

“Oh I heard this one.” June bent her head to the side. “The church of Virtue is cleansing darklings, banning Dark magic, eradicating sinners and clearing dungeons to stop the end of the world.”

“Morons.” I sighed. “They’re merely poking at the side effects and not the actual problem, which is my bigly screwup.”

“The monsters and dungeons are side effects of your screwup?” She inquired curiously.

“I believe so. The rise of monsters has to be a side effect of the uncontrollable magical nebula spinning around the black hole. I believe that whenever this continental shard passes through the denser segment of the uneven magical field around the black hole it causes a rise in monsters, starts out of control dungeon propagation.”

“That’s interesting, but what can we do about it?” June asked.

“I don’t know.” I exhaled. “I just wanted to be the most powerful God! The greatest, best Goddess there’s ever been.” I slumped my head onto the desk.

“Are you not the greatest God, Goddess?” June rolled off the gemstone covered bed.

“No.” I closed my eyes with a sigh. “I screwed up big time and now I’m just a little, sad broken remnant, a ghost of what I once was.”

"You might be small now, but you're still cool in my book!" June smiled.

“I’m sorry you had to grow up in such a shitty, decrepit, backwards world. I feel responsible for all of this. My desire for greatness had ruined everything.” I blinked at the map and it became blurry in my eyes. What was happening to me?

June came over to me and hugged me. “You seem… different? More human? Less self-centered?”

“I think it’s this... wine.” I put my head into her embrace and started to cry softly. “I came very close to non-existence recently and I’ve only just arrived at dealing with it. If it wasn’t for Tamara or the ghost of Ingrid I’d be a goner. Not existing is… painful. I never felt such pain before. I’m scared, June. I don’t want to dissolve into infinity. I screwed up and I keep screwing up. I can't even befriend my human body!”

“It’s okay Noxxy! You’ve got me now. I totally believe in you! And I come close to dying everyday and yet I get over it.” June licked me.

“Did you just cute up my divine name?” I asked, feeling that the room was swaying around me. “This is some high level blasphemy. I would totally smite you on the spot if I wasn’t so God-damn drunk! Ha ha ha har. Hic!” I laughed and started to hiccup.

“Okay, no more wine for you. Learn to drink slower and use a glass, damn it, Nox.” June took away my wine bottle. It was empty.