Chapter 35
"Whoa!" Keiichi exclaimed. "Let's back this up a bit. I'm willing to do what I have to do get this whole thing straightened out. But I need some questions answered first."
Arvid said, with a touch of irritation. "Are you backing out of this commitment? Did I judge wrong in terms of letting you into my citadel?"
"No, you didn't. But if I am going to pay the high price of leaving my family forever, I want to know who you are and why I have to leave. I'm owed at least that explanation."
Arvid thought about this for a moment and with a sigh that indicated that he was clearly not in a mood to explain himself, he said. "Very well. But time is fleeting."
Keiichi said. "I'll try to be brief. First of all, does Belldandy know that you are in this ring?"
"Yes, she does. But any knowledge of me, or the runes inscribed on the ring fall under Special Significance. That knowledge is locked in her mind, but she is forbidden to speak of it. Any attempt to do so will cause her to be physically incapacitated. She cannot even pass that information along to you through your Sacred Coupling."
"Are you related in any way to Torvald?"
"No, I am not. I am a heavenly spirit under the authority of Kami-sama."
"Being that you have no physical body, are you similar to the spirit that inhabits the Eye of Heaven?"
"I am and I know of that spirit, but I am not related to it."
"Belldandy indicated to me that this ring is made of gold from Earth. Where did she get it from?"
"She bought it from a jewelry store in your city. But…"
"But what?"
"She took it to Heaven to have me implanted into it."
Keiichi surmised that this must have occurred during that three day period before the wedding when Belldandy locked herself away to prepare for the ceremony.
"Why would she do that?"
"She was ordered to…" Arvid said.
"By whom?"
Silence
"By. Whom?" Keiichi pressed.
More silence, then. "Kami-sama."
"Kami-sama? What does he have to do with all this?"
"Everything. He spoke of the knowledge of me and the runes to Belldandy and swore her to secrecy under Special Significance."
Keiichi immediately like felt he was being used and betrayed. A pawn in some larger game. He felt that the Supreme Ruler was using Belldandy to do some secret bidding. He had but one question. "Why?"
"You were supposed to hear this from him. But being that you're here, I at least owe you this much. You were selected to take on a special role in Heaven. A special assistant to Kami-sama, as it were. He has always been impressed at how you've managed to win Belldandy's heart and also gain the respect and trust of the Norns. Your status as the only human to ever attain Godhood also is a factor in his decision."
Keiichi asked. "What role in Heaven could I take? I'm nobody special. I'm just a guy who made a wish."
"But you won the heart of a Goddess. And not just any Goddess. The greatest of all the field Goddesses. Belldandy herself. You know how much weight her name carries in Heavenly circles. You know that her parents are highly placed in Heaven's administration. Kami-sama thinks very highly of you. You are the only one who can perform the job he has for you. Do not underestimate your importance in all of this."
Keiichi always knew that Kami-sama was fond of him. But so fond as to entrust a special role as his assistant?
"So what is this job that he has for me?"
"I presume that you know about the constant battle between Heaven and Niflheim
for the market share for humanity's wishes and desires? And that figure never varies more than a few percentage points one way or the other?"
"Belldandy has mentioned that once or twice."
"Both sides have always tried to maintain a certain level of equilibrium. But Kami-sama has decided that those days are over and that he wants to permanently tilt the balance in favor of Heaven for good."
"So how does this pertain to me?"
"He figures that your knowledge of the ways of humans will be an advantage. After all, in his mind, who would know more about humans and how they think than one who was a human."
Keiichi sputtered. "But I was just one human. I can't be expected to explain to Kami-sama how all humans think. He needs to have the input of many humans. Hundreds, thousands, millions even, if he wants to know how humans really think and act."
Arvid said, "I agree. But for right now, he only knows one human. You. Which is more than Hild knows."
"Speaking of which, you know that Hild will not take kindly to this new venture."
"Correct." said Arvid. "Which is the reason why this operation is being kept secret. These days, Heaven is leaking like a sieve. Even Kami-sama's most important advisor wasn't immune to compromise. He was caught exchanging damaging information via pillow talk with Ilse. Lucky for both of them, Kami-sama fed him false information to see how bad the leak was, and he spared both of them.
"But it's safe to say that Hild has more than a few moles infiltrating Heaven, even at the highest levels. If word about Kami-sama's latest plan were to leak out about it to her, it would not go well for anyone. As a matter of fact, it is safe to say that she would launch a counter effort to try and tilt the balance to the side of Niflheim. Which, if extended to its worst possible solution would lead to…"
"War between Heaven and Hell." Keiichi muttered.
"Very perceptive." countered Arvid.
"So." said Keiichi. "How is it that Kami-sama chooses to use me?"
"What he wants you to do is to establish an outpost on Earth that will have a large group of field Goddesses deployed there permanently. It would be the job of you and Belldandy to get the outpost set up and those Goddesses acclimated to Earth culture. You would be a liaison between that outpost and Heaven. You would be answerable only to Kami-sama."
"And…"
"Kami-sama believes that having Goddesses already staged on Earth will allow Heaven to respond to human wishes more quickly than Hild's demons."
"I can see where this plan would benefit Heaven," said Keiichi. "But you know as well as I do that the advantage will not last long. Marller is the only demon assigned to Earth at this time, and even as dumb as she is, she'll detect the energy of a large group of Goddesses living on Earth at one time and go running off to Hild. And Hild will immediately set up an outpost on Earth staffed with demons. This whole thing will just escalate."
"I agree, Keiichi. Which means that it's up to you to talk Kami-sama out of running with his plan."
"But will he listen, Arvid?"
"Kami-sama respects you, even likes you. You have that in your favor, but it will not be easy to discourage him from this plan. Kami-sama can be very stubborn, and he may look upon your resistance as disloyalty."
"Disloyalty?"
"Yes." said Arvid. "Kami-sama is the Supreme Ruler of Heaven. You can say that he is a benevolent dictator. For the most part, he tries to rule fairly and he respects everyone under his authority, but he's used to having his orders followed with a minimum of dissent. There are very few who have succeeded in talking him out of a plan of action one he's committed to it. He talks to his advisers and listens to their concerns, but the decision is ultimately his to make."
Arvid continued cautiously. "But he really is devoted to this outpost idea. To the point where he truly doesn't care what Hild thinks or does. And any dissent to this plan may be considered as disloyalty, especially dissent from the one whom he has chosen as its leader. "
Keiichi had to think long and hard about what had been revealed to him. He was very concerned that if he attempted to talk Kami-sama out of what looked to be a foolish and potentially dangerous plan, somehow the Almighty One could think that Keiichi was being disloyal and somehow take his wrath out on him, and the first thing that Kei thought could be affected was his relationship to Belldandy. Kami-sama could order Bell to no longer be involved with Keiichi. To separate what was supposed to be an eternal union. Kami-sama himself assured the couple that they would never be separated.
But what Kami-sama declared, he could also undeclare. What he could bind, he could also cast asunder. With one word, he could grind Keiichi and Belldandy's bonds into the dust. No doubt that Belldandy would vehemently protest this action. She stood up to him once before, and her love for Keiichi would drive her to doing it again.
Keiichi was sure that Kami-sama would not spare even his greatest Goddess again. He would punish her as well as Keiichi for any disloyalty, either real or perceived. Kami-sama had a reputation to uphold. He could not let Gods and Goddesses run over him without repercussions. Despite Heaven being a place of light and virtue, The Supreme Lord had enemies. Deities that were not always in favor in his style of ruling. The corrupted and evil Baldur was but the latest to challenge his authority, and he ended up with an eternal stint in the Dimension of Outer Darkness for his trouble. Kami-sama was sure that where Baldur had come from, there were other wolves lurking. And he was also sure that Hild was behind some of his foes.
But this latest plan of permanently staging Goddesses on Earth to get the jump on human wishes ahead of Hild's demons had the very real potential of causing all sorts of problems. A war between Heaven and Earth with humanity in the middle could be disastrous. It's safe to say that Hild would call for the end of the doublet system, which kept the hostilities between Gods and Demons from becoming deadly.
Under that system, each God and Goddess were bonded with a Demon in a special, magical ceremony. That bond ensured that if a God, Goddess or Demon were killed, their doublet companion on the other side was killed also. The capper was that once the bond between the two was created, their memories were wiped of the act. That way, no one knew who their doublet was and that the bond acted as a system of mutually assured destruction. A deity one side would be reluctant to kill someone on the other side due to the possibility they'd be destroying themselves in the process by killing their own doublet.
But Hild was evil enough to look upon Kami-sama's action as an act of war and would insist that that war have real casualties. A lot of Gods and Goddesses, as well as Demons would die if the safeties were removed. Keiichi wondered whether Kami-sama had thought this plan all the way through.
On top of talking Kami-sama out of a plan that could end up wiping out three realms at once, Keiichi still had to get Arvid to tell him the way to remove the ring, decipher the runes inside it, and solve the problems with the Interface Layer before Yggdrasil unraveled itself and took the universe with it. All without having to agree to Arvid's mysterious condition to leave his family forever.
Sometimes being a God isn't all it's cracked up to be.