Doubt Not

The mortal paid the price and made his wish, and I answered. With that, the contract was sealed.

Huh. Strange feeling.

There was none of the pageantry one might expect. The Astral Realm did not heave as one, the heavens around Golgotha did not snap into alignment, and no storm of ether came roaring in. Even so, my soul and the soul of one mortal—Ahab—were joined, and by the law of causality the contract would be fulfilled. It could not be otherwise.

I watched him in silence.

"Ha, haha…! Cough…!"

Ahab, too, seemed to grasp by instinct that the contract had taken hold. Pain and rapture tangled across his face, and he grinned.

For this one moment, neither I nor White Dog spoke. We only watched.

Then—

Perhaps he simply couldn't bear to watch what came next. He bowed out halfway through. For all his talk of killing mortals or sparing them, the guy was secretly soft.

The mental link with White Dog cut, and with it I lost the convenience of sight. It didn't matter. My soul and Ahab's were already bound, and through that bond I could feel him with perfect clarity as his breath ran out.

Clutching the nape of his neck, Ahab began to thrash across the ground.

"Keugh…!"

This was a mortal meeting his end, here in this universe.

The universe is vast. Nothing new in that. The living things that fill it are beyond counting, and while those possessed of minds are a little rarer, they are still common as dirt—humans, Erda, Greenskins, Tauros, and the rest. Intelligent beings are not precious. A mind alone is not enough to make one special, and there is no existence in this universe granted dignity merely by existing. The same is true of the Ascended.

Proving the preciousness of my own soul, and forcing this universe to acknowledge it, had taken endless effort. The obsession with existential rank, with causality—that, too, was part of the work. Then what, in truth, proves the worth of a being? There is no clear answer. No one in this universe has found one yet. The Ascended are only a little further along than the rest. They are not omniscient, and they are not omnipotent. They have not grasped the truth. They merely live by whatever answer they have chosen to declare.

But in this moment, I was learning one way to prove the worth of a soul.

To be remembered by someone.

"Grrrk…!"

Ahab's end was not a beautiful one. An organism of blood and flesh, laid open to a hostile world, failing function by function until the business of living simply stops—that is not a process pleasant enough to merit a careful telling. He suffered. At the last he thrashed, and he begged me, and he fought however he could to live, and then he died.

With that, the life of the mortal Ahab Alhazred was over.

His existence, however, would be remembered for eternity. However frail he was, however wretchedly fate had swept him to his end, the contract bound him to me, and so his soul would not be ground away through countless reincarnations into something worthless. I would never allow it.

And his wish would be granted. It had to be.

Not long after.

About time he showed, isn't it?

From beyond the ether, a familiar spiritual presence began to register, and it was closing on me fast.

Ooh. Here he comes at last.

No sense hiding it. A deep resonance rolled through my lonely realm in the Astral Realm. At last, it was going to have its first tenant.

"Wh-where is this?"

Of course it was the soul of the mortal who, in life, had been Ahab. Sensing his utter bewilderment, I felt a faint thrill of the mind.

Strange. I feel… spiritually full. So this is why everyone makes contracts.

Ordinarily, a soul that has finished one life is bleached of every memory by the law of causality and sent to live another. A soul under contract to a transcendent being is not—still less when the soul itself was the price. The soul of a mortal bound to such a being belongs to the contractor. After that, it is the contractor's to unmake, to turn back upon the wheel, or to put to work in the Astral Realm, as they please.

Depending on where you stood, you could call that a curse or a blessing. By the common sense of the material universe, most mortals would call it a horror: your soul held ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in pawn by a transcendent, reincarnation denied, slavery unto eternity. They aren't entirely wrong. Sadists who toy with mortal souls that way are hardly rare.

"Wh-what happened to me? Did I just die? The c-contract…?"

Our Mr. Ahab had not wasted those childhood years in the cult of the Outer Gods. He was busy imagining a truly hideous end.

"Was I scammed…? Tricked by an evil god, my soul ripped out, and I don't even know whether the wish came true—just a slave for all eternity…."

That was not going to happen. My aim was to raise a proper divinity and plant a real foundation in the material universe. Swindle people like that and you burn your credit in no time, and all you pile up is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠infamy. As a long-term strategy, it is terrible.

Little bastard. Kind of cute.

I disliked that sort of thing to begin with. I had been deceived once myself, and tasted something close to eternal pain for it. I am not so low as to press the suffering I endured onto a being weaker than I am. Give and take. A fair return for the price paid. Why would I ever treat lightly a mortal who had offered me his existence entire?

Ahab, above all, was my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠first contractor. Even if a first-contract bonus cost me a little, I meant to see his wish fulfilled as surely as it could be done.

Ahem.

I smoothed my mental waves until they would sound as dignified as possible, and I made my presence known.

"Hyaaaah!"

Ahab screamed. This was my realm, and he was my contractor besides, so the cry came through the synesthetic web with beautiful clarity. It was a deeply welcome sound.

How long has it been since I had a guest?

It had been a very long time since I invited anyone into my realm. Once, out of loneliness, I had let another being in for no good reason, and the experience had been thoroughly unpleasant.

Ahab's soul, now aware of what I was, trembled and muttered.

"A b-brain… a colossal brain…!"

Oho. So that was how a mortal perceived me in the Astral Realm. Not bad. Longing and adoration would be difficult to inspire, but a colossal brain ought to look mysterious enough. No need to tinker any further.

I welcomed him with the number-one macro line of the Ascended—the line that came, by the universal tastes of the material universe, with a shape made to inspire fear.

I had a feeling I would be saying that often.

I whispered it to him in the mildest mental wave I could manage, and only then did the trembling of his soul subside, as if he were reassured. Even with me meeting him in good faith, a mortal would find it extremely hard to recover his wits and his judgment so quickly. My contractor was plainly no ordinary man.

"V-very well…."

"O my God. But… I am already dead, am I not? Even should the contract be carried out in full, how am I to know it? And if it is carried out in a form I never desired, can that truly be called fulfillment?"

He had not been dead long, and out of the habit of life he was still carrying on like a man sick with suspicion. A foul-tempered Ascended might have raged. I was not displeased in the slightest.

"Ngh…!"

If anything, I was a little amused. It was an entirely fair point. I understood. From a mortal's seat, it was worth the worry. There is that old proverb among Ahab's people, humanity—the monkey's paw. You make a wish of a transcendent being, and it comes true in some wholly other shape, and you are left worse off than if you had never wished at all. It is famous enough among the G.A.L.L.E.R.Y. regulars to have hardened into a template. For instance…

Roughly: a post about granting a mortal's wish in some grotesque fashion.

A post about a mortal who wished their lover would look only at them, and was dropped—lover and all, just the two of them—onto an uncharted planet seething with hostile life.

Posts in which beings who are actually Ascended go ook ook are, for the most part, sadistic receipts of that very meme.

Yeah, no. I'm not doing that.

I don't particularly dislike those posts. They're good for a snort when you're bored. And however the other Ascended treat their followers is their own affair. I wasn't inclined to scold anyone.

"F-forgive me. O my God."

At least I have no intention of treating my own followers that way. As I said, my purpose is to raise a divinity by the soundest means I can. Ruin upon those who had made a toy of his life. Ahab's wish would be granted.

I explained it to my first contractor in a clearer tone.

"Ah. I believe, O my God…."

So he said. Even so, the distrust had not wholly left him. Extraordinary as he was, he was still a mortal, and the limits of his thinking were plain. He could take it as perfectly natural that he was dead, a soul, and holding a lucid conversation with me—and still, tangled in nothing more than the common sense of the material universe, bare his distrust of the very one to whom he had given his soul.

But I understood. Mortals are weak, and they are full of doubt.

But I'm already dead. So how in the world…?

I can hear every word of that, you little brat. Haah. Nothing for it.

Show and prove. Time for G.A.L.L.E.R.Y.'s Beloved Fixed-Nick, Brain in a Jar, to show what he's actually worth.

I gathered my focus and drew the ether in. The whole of the realm began to shudder, tuned to the fierce will of its master.

"M-my God. What is this…?"

I kindly explained to my first, and deeply suspicious, believer exactly what was about to happen.