[June Rim Maldiver]

“Abra cadabra! Exploderus maximus!” Nox said and the world shuddered and I believed. I believed every one of her insane, wild stories about her Apostles, I believed that she was once a Goddess that ruled the world and consumed the stars themselves.

She had done an impossible thing, she had destroyed the very heart of the Triumvirate of Virtue! There was no spell circle, no visible spell flying at the Convent! The whole white basalt mountain that it stood on simply ignited.

I squinted, covered my eyes as the Convent of the Light became nothing but light and fire as did the rest of the stunned Rimmers standing upon the deck of the Resurgence. I’ve seen fire Archmages do pretty incredible things, cutting tunnels through the Rim mountains melting rock and steel with their power, but I’ve never seen anything like this... from a level zero!

The clouds parted, blasted away by the wind. A deafening boom reached us, flinging my hair and my stolen cape backwards. A colossal mushroom cloud rose into the sky above Kleinburg. Nox had done a lot of incredible things today. She freed me from my debt to Captain Nicodemus, she taught me a Void spell, but those things were believable, could have been performed by any talented wizard, not that anyone had cared to do such things for me.

This terrifying destruction was a true, unquestionable miracle, an act of divine power if there ever was one.

I dropped to my knees and I prayed. Never in my life had I prayed and yet here I was, praying to a power that could move the world. One by one, several of the Rimmers too fell to their knees when Nox had declared herself a God. She didn’t pay attention to us.

She was openly taunting, threatening the Legate and even outright demanding river cleanup of all the things... and the Legate, the unbreakable ruler of Kleinburg had submitted to Nox and ran away with her tail between her legs with the Enforcer and the Searcher right behind.

I stood up and went to get Nicodemus from the dock before he would come to his senses. Although I doubted that he would ever be the same after seeing what Nox had done to the church of Virtue. Nox freed me from him and made him sign the exact same contract! It was delicious, wonderful vengeance.

Nicodemus had only two modes when it came to me - reviling when I had worn the maid dress on the ship and callous when we were docked. He didn’t force himself upon me since he saw me as someone far below his station and had Archmage Tamara for that, but he did many other degrading things to me.

As I dragged him back into the ship, I heard his muttering “too soon… it's too soon, we’re not ready… not ready.” I wasn’t sure what he was whimpering about. I guessed that the Rimmers wanted the power of the Triumvirate to be broken on the mainland, to take this fertile, rich land for themselves, but they weren’t ready to invade anyone yet.

“Noxxy really fucked your schedule, eh Nikki?” I shoved Nicodemus onto a bench on the top deck. The nickname Nox had come up for him was hilarious. He was totally catatonic, unresponsive to me.

“How did you do that?” I came to Nox, glancing between her and the incomprehensible devastation she had unleashed.

As the Goddess explained her accomplishment, Tamara gained a bit of a backbone and tried to stand up, trying to threaten her. Nox had immediately shot Tamara down with a few words. Noxxy’s charisma was beyond frightening, beyond wild today! Was this the power of the amulets that she was wearing all over herself? No… they had all burned out, the once-mana filled gemstones were now cracked, broken and gray.

Nox told the crew that she would assign them all debts through me. I couldn't believe it. I had struggled, starved, served under all of these fucks, could find no escape, could find no way to improve my situation over a year, digging myself deeper and deeper and Nox had freed me in less than an hour!

I didn’t understand why she was doing all of this for me, knew but didn't quite fully grasp why she chose me as her Apostle.

We arrived in the Captain’s cabin and she kissed me, likely wanting to refuel her Void mana. I kissed her back, relishing the taste of her Void-infused tongue.

“Take these things off me, Apostle.” She commanded, leaning back onto the bed.

I nodded eagerly. As I slowly removed the burned out power jewelry from her body I contemplated her. Earlier she had asked how I feel about her. It was a rather odd question for a divinity, but then again Nox acted a bit off today. How did I really feel about her? Her mind was an enigma that kept befuddling me at every opportunity. At first I hated her for her ineptitude, but now I was simply infatuated with her cleverness and kindness.

Since the destruction of my village, not a single person had shown me care or the slightest bit of friendship except for Nox. Not a single Rim Instructor or even a fellow student would show me a spell without demanding tons of Reius for such and Nox did it absolutely for free. I had expected her to demand things from me, make me sign things, yet she did not.

On its own the body she had inhabited - Yul was rather appealing, which was weird because I wasn’t even into girls. There was something attractive about Yul on top of the fact that she smelled and tasted of Void, which I craved like the tastiest sort of sweet.

Valerianne Yul’s face and body was inexplicably sublime from every angle, it was as if the girl was worked on by a whole committee of Rimmer Biomancers and beauticians. Such a thing would of course be impossible on the mainland because the church of Virtue considered Pride a terrible sin, so there were no Biomancers out here as far as I knew.

Makeup wasn’t even a thing out here and yet… Yul’s face was somehow naturally enhanced. No matter what angle light fell on her, she looked stunning, sending butterflies into my stomach. Was this the power of a Goddess within her body or the power of the amulet of healing? I’ve seen a lot of naturally good-looking mainland maidens but there was something slightly off, different about Yul.

“Are you perhaps also the Goddess of beauty?” I asked, feeling a bit shy.

“Possibly.” Nox shrugged. “I ate a lot of Gods back in the day. Can’t be bothered to remember them all.”

As I removed the last of the ruined amulets from her, I realised that I felt more than the inexplicable biological attraction to her body. I tried to understand my feelings, tried to evaluate my desires, attempted to determine where they were coming from. It was a strange, alien feeling deep in my body. The dark shadow of my soul… craved to be in her embrace! Something whispered to me that I could rely on her. That she existed to secure, hold, protect and care for me.

“How many Gods did you consume, exactly?” I asked.

“A ton.” She shrugged. “This number is quite irrelevant at this point. I’ve lost lots of my memory and power over six thousand years of imprisonment.”

“I um… when I look at you, I feel that I can trust you.” I said. “And I don’t know why that is. You’ve done a lot of awesome stuff for me today, but we haven’t been that long together and yet I feel that I can really trust you.”

“Hm?” Nox yawned.

“Not your mind. Your body. It um… exudes trust? When I look at you, it’s like the Void in my soul whispers that I should rely on you, to be with you. Is this normal for being your Apostle?”

“That is a bit odd, but then again I can’t remember every single thing about magic. What I can tell you is that being my Apostle is a fairly basic [Pact]. It shouldn't be manipulating you mentally or forcing you to love or trust me. I preferred my Apostles to be free of mental influences, because an independent, free mind produces far better ideas for spell matrixes than one that’s distracted by feelings. Perhaps this was a mistake? A number of my Apostles had betrayed me in the end.”

“Hrm.” I said. “You require belief from your followers, yeah? Is that a type of love?”

“Nah. My followers can hate or fear me. The type of a feeling they have for me is irrelevant. It’s just the thought that counts. As long as people think about me, I exist. All of humanity in my Void Empire existed to believe in me.”

“Did you ever love any of your followers? Were you ever friends with any of them?” I asked curiously, trying to understand her better.

“Why would I do such an inefficient thing? Mortals to me are like fireflies are to you. They are born, create something neat and die,” she said. “Showing care or affection to a select individual follower was an absolute waste of my time. I made the Rewards System for everyone. My System blessed, elevated the most hard working or clever ones to prosperity, long life and power!”

"Hrm." I muttered, not feeling satisfied with such cold rationality.

“Here, want an easy Quest?” She asked lazily.

I nodded. She stuck out a tongue at me and a window flashed in my eyes.

Quest: I’m freaking tired, hurt and very burned out physically. Make me feel better please. Reward: 1000 points

Nox wasn’t trying to impress me, wasn’t trying to take advantage of me like Rimmers did, when she gave me a Quest! I blinked, my mind spinning with wild abandon. Yul wasn’t lying. Nox really did give out Quests.

She gave me a personal Quest! I nearly squeed out loud.

More than that, Nox made the entire freaking System! Everything good and horrible about our world was because of Nox! Every single damn thing! Every Archmage and hero and monster owed their power to her. Every specialty, affinity, curse and pact had been designed by her six thousand years ago!

“Holy shit! Everything is the way it is now because of you!” I uttered.

She nodded, looking a bit distraught.

I hugged her, caressing her softly. “It’s okay, Noxxy. You’re not dead yet. You can try again.”

“I sought to devour the stars because I wanted to stop the hand of entropy.” She whispered. “I made a mistake. Humans... in their brief lives weren’t able to look ahead far enough. They didn’t see distant future catastrophes, fires of supernovas, the heat death of the universe. They didn’t realise that my sun-devouring rune would detonate catastrophically once I stopped focusing on it.”

I had no idea what entropy, supernovas or heat death was, but the Void between us told me that she felt great sorrow and regret.

I went to the Captain's cabinets and grabbed a bench of absurdly expensive cleansing, relaxing and healing oils. Captain had made me learn everything about these before I had to use these on him, the leacherous fuck, but this time… this time things were totally different. This time, I was happy to care for my Noxxy. I had a personal Quest to do and a Goddess to satisfy!

I rotated her and started to knead her tense shoulders, and she started to relax bit by bit. She might have been Goddess, but she was still stuck in a human body with all of its feelings and flaws. Eventually she totally relaxed in my arms.

“I can’t undo what I had done,” She whispered. “I can’t bring my Empire back from rubble and dust. It seems like there is nobody left who remembers my greatness."

“I understand,” I said. “I… uh… can never return home too. The Sextants had destroyed my village. My happiest memories with my family and friends exist only in my dreams now.”

“What was it like?” She asked.

“My village, Maldive… dangerous, but beautiful. Houses of my kin... hanging from great stone cliffs above endless glacier valleys. Deep, nebulous currents, an ocean of wild mana constantly above our heads, filled with star-manta-rays, sky-whales and other strange titanic beasts from the skyocean. Strange, alien beasts that glide between continents. The wings we made from manta-ray skins allowed us to fly through the skyocean shallows and even down to the valleys below.

I loved camping, hunting in the valleys with my friends. Some of the valleys held azure lakes with crystal-clear water filled with all sorts of strange, magical critters. Yet other valleys held oceans of golden wheat filled with adorable, little cat-owls. It was really nice.” I said with a small sigh.

“I’d like to see it with you.” She said.

“Huh?” I uttered, surprised.

“We have a flying ship and a crew now. We can take it anywhere!” Nox said. “I don’t know how or if I can ever fix the world, but at very least… I’d like to experience, to see what beauty had been borne from the catastrophe of my failure. Also, you’re obviously coming with me, Apostle.”

“Thank you.” I whispered, smiling.

“Ain’t nothing to it. I need your Shadow mana to do my divine Void magic.”

“Well I can’t get Void mana without you either!” I pointed out.

“Perhaps there is value in having a friend,” she said. “Someone to share successes with and also to watch my back. I feel much better now, thanks.”

[Quest completed! +1000 points] The System dinged.

“My turn to try this!” She grabbed the oil bottle from me and started to apply it to my skin.

“Let’s see if I can get points for making my Apostle relaxed!” She grinned, sticking out her tongue. I guessed that she blessed herself with a Quest.

She dove right onto me, replicating what I had done to her.

I started to melt into her.

“I think I know of a way to improve the relaxational value of this experience.” She wagged the emerald ring on her finger and gravity suddenly vanished in the Captain's cabin, oil bottles floating up.

“Not fair! I didn’t get to do that!” I gasped as she floated around me with a huge grin.

As she caressed and kissed me, the need to be with her, to consume her ignited in my mind like myriads of galactic constellations, like the purple nebulae sparkling in the night outside and I could no longer fight, could no longer resist it. It was as if there was nothing outside of our little gravity-less heaven, nothing but me and her, nothing but us intertwined and our little universe forged from want and need. Her every curve was drawing me in, demanding my attention and soon enough both of us were lost to primal, wild, uncontrollable urges.