"What is a system reset?" Ed said with a little fear in his face.
"Think of it as your body. Do you keep the same hair all the time? Or does new hair grow in?" The oracle made a sandwich appear and took a small bite.
"No, you can grow new hair on your head and when you come of age you grow new hair in new places," Ed said sheepishly.
"Exactly, although I never had the latter if I am not mistaken." The oracle smiled and put the sandwich down. "Look, like any good organism occasionally the body has to shed skin or hair. It is time for the system to shed something and you are the one to do it."
Ed shook his head, "How do you know all this?"
The Oracle leaned forward and put her hands on the side of the sides of her chair. "Let us just say that I still talk to the creator very regularly. I have a hard time conveying the thoughts of the creator normally, so most people treat me as if I am a mystical being. The Creator talks in an old language that is hard to translate into the common language."
Ed blinked, "So, you really aren't divine but you aren't human either? What are you? Some kind of pure mana?"
The Oracle clapped in excitement, "Oh do you know how long it has been since I've had a conversation where the person understands so much! You really must come for lunch more often. You should bring the girl next time. Tell Ko'Loss outside you have my permission."
"That mountains name is Ko'Loss?" Ed stammered.
"Yes, and he is very old. He was the first human to transfer his soul into a golem. He has lived over 3000 years, he works for me now. He is tired of the bickering between the northern and southern peoples. You should talk to him more."
"He is one of the other fourteen, right?"
"Exactly. He wasn't the first but his scroll was written into the past so that he would be around today."
"Okay so back up a minute. You mean that phrase on the back of my soul sheet isn't supposed to be there?" Ed looked around for his satchel. He never took it off and couldn't remember putting it down. He wasn't wearing it now though.
He found it lying by the leg of the table and reached down to pull out his copy of his scroll. When he unfurled it and laid it on the table he looked at it. The front still had both Ed's name and Erust next to it. When he flipped it over he could see the note scrawled out. "Chronic lack of accomplishment - no effect from perseverance" on the back. There it was, the unluckiest charm ever. Why hadn't he assumed earlier that this would affect him also?
Ed held his copy up and looked at the Oracle. "So how do we erase it?"
She held up the soul scroll and rubbed her finger across the back. The words sizzled from the touch and slowly started fizz off the page. Ed couldn't tell but he glowed slightly for a minute while his soul readjusted to the change. His own scroll changed before his eyes, he words on the back disappeared completely.
"That's it?" he said.
"Yes, Remember I am a function of the Creator, I harness some of his direct power as needed." The oracle smiled and put the scroll on the table. "I would have made you work for it but this conversation has been so much more than I expected. So consider it a gift."
"Can I undo the curse on Ashra outside now?" he perked up just a little at the thought the was far more capable now than before. He could feel that he was somehow different now.
"You can, but it won't be that easy. Curse's cost the caster as well as the recipient. In this case, the caster took something from the victim and you will need it back to reverse it. I don't know what it was but you should be able to tell now that you are unrestricted." The oracle smiled and rubbed her hands together before leaning slightly forward.
"The problem is that we are going to have a visitor very soon Ed. I am not sure what is going to happen but Ko'Loss is delaying it outside right now. You must listen, you need to find the other fourteen souls Ed. I am going to give you something." She pulled up a small bag from her side and held open the bag and pulled out a polished copper disc about the size of a lemon.
"These are the codex for each soul. When you find them all you need to hand them each one. The disc will identify the soul and its place in the plan."
Ed took the back and pulled one out. The disc seemed to spin in his hand and slowly the letter E engraved itself on the face of the coin and hammer formed on the back. He looked at both sides, knowing that just seconds ago it had been blank.
"Very good, you have just seen what they do. Each disc will form to the owner and will respond only to the special souls. If you ever have questions you can always come here. When you are done make sure you are ready and come back here. When you get here I will show you what you must do. Now, we have finally run out of time. It comes..."
Ed was about to ask what was coming but the doors to the room blew off the hinges before he could. Ysennia walked through in her amazon goddess person. Hadres stood just behind her to the left and Hatsheput stood directly behind him.
"This is enough from you, you meddling archaic creation!" Ysennia pointed a finger at the Oracle who had changed from a matronly grandmother into the form of a taller scholarly gentleman. He stood up with his chest held high. He wore a suit of bright blue with a matching tie and looked directly at Ysennia. "You thought your threats would keep me from helping him. But you forget that I am not a part of your system. I am different from every other thing on this planet. You cannot hurt me or my disciples!"
The oracle clapped its hands together and the room changed. The ornate decorations and columns were gone leaving only Ed sitting in a chair with his bag at his side in the middle of a barren space of bright white sandstone walls.
"Very cute Oracle. You felt the need to upset everything. You are so old that you no longer understand what it is that is happening. You don't understand that the creators plan would destroy the whole planet, not reset it and make it better!"
"Who has spent more time with the creator? You, a young goddess, or I, the administrator of his very system of rules?" The oracle snapped a finger and a staff appeared in his hands. "You can not know what I know. I know what 4000 years ago looked like and I know what 4000 from now will look like."
"Well did you predict this?" Ysennia took her sword and slammed it straight down into the dirt. She put both hands on the pommel of the sword and screamed as she pushed as much divine energy as she could into the dirt.
The oracle felt it before it could react. The goddess knew that the oracle was tied to the location of the ruins more than the actual building. So Ysennia reached out and moved the who ruin over by 50 yards. All the ruins and everything else under the ground instantly moved. Ed stared as the Oracle disappeared from view. It looked at first like he was thrown through the wall. Then Ed realized what had happened as the energies stopped swirling around him.
The power of the energies made Ed want to throw up from suddenly being exposed to so much power so quickly. When he got his mind to quit spinning around his head he realized that the earth had moved. The Oracle must still be where the room used to be and the goddess in essence stole the room where it used to be.
"What did you do the oracle?!" Ed said as he slowly got himself up onto one knee.
"That old thing will take a few minutes process out where we are. I had hoped it would have played along with the plan but it isn't the only person working on it's own plan I think." Ysennia said walking towards Ed and changing back into her slightly mousy form.
"Ed, I am very sad. This puts me in a very difficult position. You have forced me to do something I didn't want to do. The Lord God will assuredly be notified of the change soon enough so I must escalate. I had hoped you'd come on board with the plan soon enough when you saw what was going on. The Lord wants to erase all the divine and mana power in this world. He then wants to watch it grown back from scratch. This would be a loss of every belief on the planet. Lawlessness and fear would cover the land!
Then the loss of their deities and spirits would cause huge numbers of people to lose all their trust in the planet and the lord god. It is also a death sentence for the divine on this planet as well. We are living creations in a certain way and we don't want to die! We can't reincarnate as easily as you all can!"
Ed was still shaky on his feet when he got upright but he looked at Ysennia. "Why not just tell me that? I get that you want may want to live and that you might actually be scared, but what you are doing has created a huge lack of trust between you and me right now!" Ed said finally getting his feet under him and stable.
"Humans follow instructions better when they aren't really given any and we put obstacles in their way. You resemble rodents that way. You just walk up against the edge of the wall following the safe direction it goes in, long before you start walking out into the unsafe wild unknown."
Ysennia took a few steps forward until she stood directly in front of him. She reached out and dusted off his shoulders and straightened his shirt. She used her hand to move his chin back and forth to look at both sides of his face. "You know, you really are an amazing specimen. It's been over 4000 years since this body has been back. And then the Oracle just HAD to use this body when she put your soul into the world. She has control of the laws of how the physical and divine interact and this had to be intentional!"
Ed was still trying to clean the fog from his brain. He was listening to Ysennia talk but was using all his concentration to stay on his feet. He couldn't do much to try and keep her from touching him.
"Ed, when I was alive, I was also married. My husband was a fine, sturdy, hardworking man. He wasn't that kind of beautiful that inspires tragedies. He just slightly above normal, and so was I. He made me happy. I had kept his body safe for when I would reincarnate, some time in the future. And she stole him from me. He never wanted to reincarnate his soul, so his body would have been up for use by any soul.
And can you know what it is like seeing the face of your soul mate walking around with your soul in it? You are so much like him but not him and it drives me nuts! He would have done this for me. Why can't you just do what I ask of you! I have kept you all to myself, safe, pure, untainted by the bodies of other women!" Ysennia slapped his face just as she finished talking.
"And you had to sully that with that woman out there!" She threw her hands up in the air. "Why would you do that! You were mine to play with only, Ed!"
When she turned around she had his soul scroll in her right hand, using it like a baton.
"But now, I have to do this the hard way. You can't just go kill the new god in the south and recement the faith in us! You can't make sure that we are remembered and that our power of belief is strong enough to keep us from being wiped out. You could have convinced the other souls to not reset everything." She took her left hand and ran it over where she had slapped him before. The warmth tingled in her fingertips.
"You do remember that I am the Goddess of creation and destruction?"
Ed nodded, "Yes so you should be happy to see things destroyed also!"
She smiled. "Oh and I do find it absolutely satisfying. For anything to be made something else must be destroyed. A tree is destroyed to make a home. An animal is destroyed to make a meal. And now a soul must be destroyed to make a prophet!"
Ed looked as Ysennia unrolled his soul scroll in a matter of seconds and then used both hands to rip it straight down the middle. His whole body shook as it felt the effects of the destruction of his scroll. He felt his body being ripped apart from the inside.
Ysennia walked over and dropped the two pieces on the ground. She leaned down and picked up Ed's convulsing body, bringing it close to her body. Ed felt his head on her shoulder. His arms and legs were shaking and his mind was on fire. He looked at Ysennia who was brushing his hair from his head while she rocked him back and forth.
"This will be over soon and you will go back into my collection, waiting for us to be together again!" She leaned in and kissed Ed softly on the forehead.
"Why do this to me?" Ed croaked out.
"You know too much, you may not agree to do things my way. I have taken that glamour I put around you and made a copy of your soul. It will go around fulfilling my mission for you. Your soul won't even know its not really you. Best of all, just to make you feel better I will reverse the curse on the girl. She and your copy will go on to fall into love!
And they will take care of the spirit in the south. They will become closer and closer and neither of them will ever know what happened here. But I must tell you, Ed. There is one thing I won't give them back."
She stopped rocking and used her hand to lift Ed's head up to look at her eyes. "You didn't realize it but you did something I can't let out into the world. It's sad because you would have been an excellent father. Both of you would have been excellent fathers. But the only baby that lives is the one between me and you. The abomination you made was too much for the world. Not only was it human and demi-human mixed it was also partially divine. Its power would have unsettled the world."
Ed swallowed back tears as the words sank into his brain. They had consummated the marriage! Rennish was wrong, they had conceived a baby! His child, that was what she was talking about. That was why Ashra kept holding her belly!
Ed started trying to thrash around but the strength of his body was slowly wearing away, all he could muster was small squirm.
"Don't struggle! Don't waste energy! I didn't kill it Ed, I couldn't do that to your child. I put it into the world. I gave it to the one human greedy enough to hide it until I return as a human. Then I will put it into me and you and I will be the proudest parents of the world's strongest soul."
Ed felt his life finally draining away. She was right, he was struggling against the futile and nearing end of his life as he knew it. In his last moments, his thoughts went to Rennish and Ashra outside. He thought about the child that should have been. And he thought about the coin he had made earlier with the oracle. When he thought about it he felt like he could still feel the cold metal in his fingers as he clutched onto it.
"Shhh... Shhhhh... It's over now. I will see this body again. Ed, I think I can finally stop bringing this copy of your soul back. Just know that I have enjoyed getting to know you, even if you aren't my love."
And with that Ed's eyes drooped and his gaze stretched off into the distance. She held onto his lifeless body for a moment just to make sure that the soul had left the shell of her former lover. "Now I must return this back to its place for safekeeping." She lifted the body upright and snapped her fingers. The corpse disappeared into the nothingness of the place Ysennia kept her most treasured possessions. A dimension between this one and the next. Where even the creator would have a hard time getting to.
She got herself up off the floor. She made sure that the room was empty except for her and smiled. Right about now the body of Erust was walking out towards Rennish and Ashra. Ashra was feeling the effects of the curse going away. Ysennia expected Rennish wouldn't even notice the changes in his persona from Ed to Erust.
Hadres walked up to Ysennia. He had been standing in the back of the room watching as this all unfolded. "Do you think that was absolutely necessary?"
"Are you questioning me now?" Ysennia looked at his beady eyes and tilted her head.
"I didn't say that, I asked if that was the best way to handle it."
"This will work out fine. Trust me, no one will ever notice that Ed's gone and Erust will go along with our plan because he is now a doll created for the plan. And because a copy of Ed's soul is inside that body Lord God won't look hard enough to realize its the original before it's too late. And if he does the Oracle was the last one with the Scroll and we can blame it on that old fart! It's a perfect setup for us."
Hadres shook his head and smiled. "If you think it's going according to plan. I will follow along."
"That's a good plan. Now you must do your part to guide this prophet along his path. You have the influence down here and the available manpower." She waved her hand at Hatsheput who was standing quietly behind her master.
"Okay, I will guide him where he needs to be." Hadres bowed and walked out of the room. Ysennia was pleased with herself. All things were lined up, her world would continue on, and she would make sure that her soul would live on to be reincarnated along with her lover as soon as she could get it all set into motion.