Chapter 168: 168. Xavier’s Soul is in Limbo. I’m Moving In.

The world changed around him the way it always did when Lustia’s domain pulled him in. It wasn’t like darkness turning into light or sleep turning into wakefulness.

It was more like a change in the quality of reality itself, as if the normal version of the world had just been moved aside to show the version underneath it.

He was standing in the familiar space of her domain, and Lustia was exactly where she always seemed to be when he arrived, which was wherever she had decided to be and which was, in this particular case, her throne.

She was sitting sideways across it. One leg was draped over the armrest and the other foot on the floor, holding a peach that she had apparently been in the middle of eating when the idea of inviting him here had occurred to her, or possibly she had timed it precisely so that she could be eating a peach when he arrived, which was entirely within her range of behavior.

She looked up at him with the expression she usually wore in this space, which was the one that sat somewhere between genuine warmth and the particular amusement of someone who had all the context and was watching him work toward it from the uninformed end.

“Perfect time, am I right?” she said before he could say anything. “I called you here because I know there are many things you wanted to ask me.”

Rex said, “I always do.”

“You brought more things to say than usual,” she said, and then she bit into the peach. “The gathering… it seems like it went pretty well with a lot of information you and I needed.”

Rex crossed the space between the entrance and the throne without hurrying, because Lustia’s domain rewarded the same approach he brought to everything else, which was composure first.

He stopped at a distance that was close enough to be a conversation and far enough to be a choice. “Let’s just cut all the bullshit and get straight to the point.”

“The blessing from Xavier Xenworth hasn’t been taken away.” He said, “What the fuck is going on…?”

Lustia said, “No.”

“That means the Goddess of Justice either is unaware her Apostle is dead, knows but has taken no action, or knows something about how he died that makes her registry unclear.” He watched her face to see which of these she thought was most accurate.

“I need to know which one.”

Lustia finished chewing the bite and looked at the peach for a moment with the kind of focus that comes from someone who knows how to enjoy things. “The registry works on confirmation, not inference.”

“A god nor a goddess doesn’t take back a blessing until the vessel’s soul crosses the line between living and whatever comes after, which isn’t always clean and doesn’t happen right away.”

“That was important because of how Xavier died,” she said. “High-energy telekinetic termination at the level you used it doesn’t always result in a clean soul departure.”

“The physical destruction is complete, but the soul’s ability to cross the boundary depends on things that have nothing to do with the body’s condition.”

For the first time, Rex looked confused with that answer. “What…?”

“What does that mean?” Rex asked.

“From the Goddess of Justice’s point of view, her Apostle’s status is currently in a transitional state that the registry is holding open while it resolves, and it will close eventually.”

“These kinds of things always do happen sometimes.” She looked at him with the special brightness that her eyes had when she was about to say something intriguing. “But the interesting question isn’t when it closes…”

“But it’s what you can do with it while it’s still open.”

Rex thought about this. “If the blessing is still there and I’m wearing Xavier’s face through shapeshifting—”

“You would not get the blessing.” Lustia said, “Shapeshifting makes you look like someone else, not connect with God.”

“The Apostle of Justice’s real blessing is attached to Xavier’s soul, which is now somewhere between where he last was and where souls with Apostle designations go when they die.”

“However,” she said, sounding like someone who had been waiting for the second half of a sentence, “a person wearing Xavier’s face and possessing enough residual energy to convincingly imitate his power signature would be very difficult for the Apostle network to definitively identify as not-Xavier, particularly from a distance and during combat.”

“Because they don’t know what Xavier looks like when he’s in a compromised state,” Rex said. “They’ve never seen him after something happened that changed him.”

“People change,” Lustia said in agreement. “Especially apostles who have been through big things.”

Rex stood there for a moment, thinking about what this meant.

The Apostle of Justice’s name was in a kind of divine limbo that would eventually lead to his confirmed death. This meant that the network would eventually take Xavier off its active registry and heal the wound his absence had caused.

He couldn’t fully predict how long it would take because it depended on processes that worked on a timescale he couldn’t completely understand.

But while it was still open, adding a character who worked with the demon forces instead of against them and went by Xavier’s name and face would get more attention from the network than a villain who was just unknown.

It would be a familiar face in a new and scary setting, which would be much more confusing than an unknown threat.

The Apostle network wouldn’t know if Xavier, who was now The Undead Bringer could be a possessed body, a demon impersonation, or, in the worst-case scenario, an Apostle who has truly turned.

An Apostle who had turned and brought his divine connection with him to the other side.

“The blessing wouldn’t transfer to me even in Xavier’s shape,” Rex said, thinking through it. “But the network doesn’t know that the blessing functions the way you just described it.”

“If I appear as Xavier and demonstrate necromantic capability at a scale that implies divine-level power underpinning it—”

“They will come to the conclusion that explains the difference between what Xavier was and what The Undead Bringer is,” Lustia said. “The blessing was not taken away.”

“It was corrupted or turned upside down.” She was watching him with the focused attention of someone who was really enjoying this. “The Goddess of Justice would eventually correct that perception through her own channels…”

“…but correction takes time, and by the time it arrives, the operational damage will already be done.”

“Goddamn…” Rex looked at her. “You’ve put some thought into this, huh?”

“I think about a lot of things.” She said, “It’s what I do when I’m not there.”

“The Energy Manipulation that covers my signature,” Rex continued. “How complete is it against divine-level detection?”

“The Apostle network has Apostles in it. If one of them ran a direct divine scan on the person wearing Xavier’s face—”

“Your Energy Manipulation works at a level that gives false-positive readings instead of readings that show no signature.” Lustia said, “An absence would raise suspicions.”

“A signature that looks like it has been changed or damaged, which is exactly what an Apostle who has been corrupted would expect to see, is not suspicious.”

Rex thought about this for a long time, going through the possible outcomes in the order that they were most likely to happen.

Introducing Xavier as the Undead Bringer. The network’s first thought was that the Apostle was missing in action and had come back as an enemy.

Possession, corruption, and impersonation are all possible explanations. The result of the divine scan revealed a strange signature that is consistent with corruption.

The hypothesis was confirmed, or at least supported. The Goddess of Justice corrected the record through divine channels after a period of confusion that varied in length but was long enough to be useful.

The duration was particularly significant for Apollo, as he had a personal relationship with Xavier through the Apostle network and would find it more challenging to deal with an Apostle who had become a villain than an unknown one.

“I fucking know it… this is going to be harder than I thought it would be.”

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