Faith is earned 3, p.38
Faith is Earned 3, page 38
“…Luke.”
He breathed once more, and then he ran.
Suth cursed, leaping onto the slime the messenger had left behind, its jelly form squeaking as it carried her.
“Slow down, you mad goat! Even with a mount I can’t keep pace!”
Brag only breathed as he sprinted through tunnels that glowed faintly with the blue shimmer of embedded crystals. His boots pounded against stone, echoing like drums, until the daylight burst over him.
When he emerged, he stopped dead and stared.
The hill had been transformed beyond recognition. What had once been a camp had grown into a city of stone and slime, dwarves moving through streets carved into terraces, steam from forges billowing toward the clouds. Above them, rivers of green jelly glided through channels, the slimes working alongside their dwarven partners as seamlessly as water through a stream. Towers rose along the slopes, smoke curling from vents. This was no longer an exile’s refuge. This was the City of the Ninth Gate, the pride of the slime dwarves. Their numbers had swelled with dwarves coming in from their ancestral home after Brag, Suth and the others’ deeds had washed away their sins and brought them back their honor.
And above that city hung the sign.
The balanced scales shimmered in the sky, vast and perfect, shedding golden light across roofs and forges alike. Brag’s throat tightened. He heard Suth’s voice beside him, soft yet fierce.
“Oh, Luke. I’m so proud of you.”
But the symbol pulsed again, and this time Brag felt more than warmth. Words without sound struck his heart. A call for aid, clear and strong. A time, a place… and a plea.
He barked a laugh that rang louder than anvils.
“I’m gonna smack that boy silly next time I see him. As if he’d ever need to beg us!”
Turning, he faced the growing crowd. Hundreds of dwarves had gathered, miners with soot-stained hands, smiths clutching hammers, guards leaning on spears tipped with slime-forged steel. Among them stood the old expedition crew, faces lined but shining with memory.
Brag drew himself to full height and roared so the entire city would hear.
“Ninth Gate! Hear me! Saddle the slime-riders and summon Gloob’s Vanguard! Our lad calls for aid, and we will answer! The Ninth Gate marches to war!”
◆◆◆
Lessie leaned over her desk, quill dripping ink across the parchment that already looked more like a battlefield than a letter. Her latest attempt at diplomacy sprawled before her in angry, blotted lines. The [Temple Architect], that lecherous relic with too much rank and too little shame, had sent another ‘proposal’ written with so much innuendo it might as well have been rhymes carved on a brothel wall. She pressed fingers to her temples and considered, not for the first time, the moral weight of asking Masha to solve her problem with something sharp and final. To the man’s nether regions, preferably.
The nerve of him. For all his silver tongue and sweet words about ‘artistic curves’, the old goat had somehow forgotten that temple construction did not involve offers of ‘mutual inspiration’. Lessie had dressed to command, not to seduce. Her robes of white and crimson were at least a bit revealing, yes, but they were meant as symbols of joy and devotion, not an invitation.
She glared at the parchment again, muttering under her breath.
“Tit for that. I’ll tit-for-that his head off his shoulders.”
Before she could blot another insult onto the page, the door burst open. A young acolyte stumbled in, his face pale beneath curls of sweat. Panic and awe mixed across his features.
“What happened?”
He gasped for breath.
“You need to come! Quickly! The center of the hall, Panitheos is sending us a message!”
The quill clattered to the floor. Lessie did not remember crossing the office, nor the sound of her heels on the steps, nor even shoving the boy aside as she stormed down the staircase. She remembered only the sight that awaited her.
The House of Cheer pulsed with light. The air itself seemed drunk on it, fumes of spiced wine and perfume, laughter echoing without source, and the scent of less-than-legal substances. At the center floated a spiral of rainbow fire, the Icon of Panitheos, radiant and alive. But woven around it spun another mark, one she would have known anywhere.
A set of scales, balanced in perfect measure. She whispered, her voice trembling with relief and something deeper.
“Luke. Finally.”
The world brightened around her. The rainbow folded into the scales, and within her mind she heard both divinity and mortal soul entwined. Panitheos’s laughter roared like festival drums, but beneath it she felt Luke’s voice, steady and warm, carrying words without sound. What was to come, what was needed, where they would gather. A plea wrapped in apology.
Lessie smiled, fierce and bright.
“Apologies later, love. For now, I’m coming.”
Then she turned to her gathered Faithmates, her voice a whip of command that snapped through the hall.
“Get. Me. Everyone!”
◆◆◆
Steel clashed against steel, echoing across the valley that once housed the broken remnants of a Faith. Masha had been watching her students drill when the light fell from above.
A spear first, of pure white fire. Then it folded, melted, and stretched into a sword. Then a mace, then a halberd, then back again, each form flashing like a heartbeat.
Ibesha had come.
Every trainee froze mid-strike, eyes drawn upward as the spectral weapon spun and pulsed in silent fury. But even that wonder paled when a second sigil appeared beside it, golden and gleaming. The Scales of Xelreth. Luke’s God had gotten himself a symbol.
The air filled with soundless meaning, as Faith brushed against Masha’s skin like heat. She understood it all at once. Luke calling across worlds, the Gods gathering, war rising again. The time, the place, the promise of battle to come.
She grinned, teeth bared.
“About damn time.”
Her relieved laughter rolled through the field, her Faithmates staring at her. The call of war had reached them. And she, for one, had been waiting for too long.
“Xot, I hope you’re watching. Hold on, boys, I’m coming!”
◆◆◆
Across the continent, the Scales of Xelreth appeared again and again, golden light flickering over rooftops, alleyways, temples, and meadows. Each manifestation speaking to the listeners directly, in more than words.
Some appeared above crowded squares, others over lonely roads. Farmers dropped plows. Priests paused mid-sermon. Those who had ever whispered Luke’s name, those who had ever felt the tug of his faith, lifted their heads in quiet understanding.
In the far village of Farrowend, where everything once began, a father and son stood outside their cottage as the symbol burned above the fields. Herm watched in silence, jaw tight, while his father laid a hand on his shoulder.
Elsewhere, in cities and forests and mountains, other eyes turned upward.
And within Ischaratot itself, in a high chamber above the city’s wall, a single woman stared up at the sky and sighed. [Commander] Troca watched the scales hover beyond the window, golden light spilling across her desk. Her hand brushed the hilt of her sword, though she did not rise.
“It falls to me again, does it? A war of Faith, but my city is still bleeding.”
She stood at last and faced the symbol squarely. The light painted her armor with fire, gleaming across old scars.
“It isn’t my duty to fight your battles. Nor is it possible for me to abandon my city. But... I'll see what I can do.”
◆◆◆
The people of Kareth’s End had no need for omens or guessing games. When the symbol appeared above the fields, a golden set of scales suspended in perfect balance, they already knew its purpose. For their God stood among them, barefoot in the grass, his hair tousled by the evening wind. Halren, once a fading spirit and now reborn through Luke’s hand, gazed upward with solemn eyes that belonged to someone far older than his youthful face suggested.
The villagers had gathered in the clearing, the same place where they had once begged their nameless God to return. They saw the light, felt it hum in their bones, and turned to him in reverence.
Halren lifted his small hand, palm glowing faintly with divine warmth.
“This will be dangerous. I don’t want any of you getting hurt. But... Luke helped us. Helped me. So, whoever wishes to go, whoever wants to stand with him, you have my blessing.”
Even before the echo of his words faded, hands rose all across the crowd. Farmers, hunters, carpenters, and even the elderly, every palm stretched skyward. They had been saved once by a stranger’s Faith, they would repay that salvation with their own.
◆◆◆
Far away, in a body clouded by age and smoke, an old man jolted upright from the filth of his cot. Sweat clung to his brow and his breath was ragged. Dreams never brought him peace anymore, they came tangled, always half-remembered, always soaked with screams. His beard hung in knots, his clothes tattered, the stench of misery clinging to him like a curse. Yet tonight something different stirred behind his eyes, something that pulled him from despair.
He stared into the dark corner of the room as if watching through it. No light appeared for him, no radiant sigil blazing in the heavens, yet the pressure of divinity reached him all the same. It trembled in the air like a forgotten song finally remembered.
He whispered, voice cracked from disuse.
“My God… your brother marches to war. I could not save you. I- I failed you. I will not fail him.”
Reality cracked.
◆◆◆
Almost a month had passed since the hall of roots had echoed with divine words and Luke’s voice had sealed an accord between Xelreth and the World Tree. A month since the royal three had bowed in awe, since a barkling had become a dryad, since a new destiny had unfurled beneath the forest canopy. And almost a month since Luke’s call had rippled outward across the world, a call no mortal tongue could have carried alone.
The first week vanished into toil. Five thousand nymphs marshalled under Irota’s direction, their songs turning to chants of discipline, their hands shaping vine and bark into armor supple yet strong. Spears sprouted from roots, arrows fletched with silver leaves, shields bound in resin hardened under divine breath.
Clefa trained beside her elder, day and night, her new body still strange to her, her powers rising and falling in surges. She learned the art of communion, the whisper between tree and heart, the exchange of memory and strength, and Irota taught her every lesson with urgency, aware that her own time dwindled.
The rest of the settlement throbbed with a different kind of energy. For though the march ahead was holy, the nymphs understood the fragility of what lay behind. They celebrated as only children of joy and memory could. Love turned to fever, songs to laughter, and even Radiante, ever dramatic, ever beautiful, found himself crushed beneath adoration so literal that even Irota’s powers could barely keep him standing.
He had wanted to be loved. Now he was worshiped. Then again, that was what repeated army-sized orgies do to someone.
By the time Luke and Clef prepared to depart, the half-elf looked half-dead and wholly delighted, his hair tangled, his robes torn, his grin faint but content.
Clef patted his shoulder solemnly.
“You’ve done the work of a saint, my dude. And probably a few sinners too. For real, even Panitheos is impressed.”
Radiante chuckled weakly, leaning on his new dryad brides for balance.
“If I fall now, bury me under petals, not stone. Let it be said I died fulfilled.”
Even Luke smiled, and when the time came for farewell, he clasped Radiante’s forearm firmly.
“You gave them more than charm, my friend. You gave them their future back. Keep your family safe.”
“I will. And when you return, you’ll find a hundred children named after that satyr and his little tree-girl.”
Clef whooped, ruffling Clefa’s hair.
“You hear that, kid? That’s like, a whole nursery chanting our names. Dude, make sure they get my good side in the stories, yeah?”
Clefa stuck out her tongue.
“You don’t have a good side.”
Laughter followed them as they left the settlement, a thousand voices singing farewells beneath the morning light.
Weeks later, the song of their march filled the hills.
Five thousand nymphs moved as a single tide, their feet soft upon the grass, the rhythm of their step steady as a heartbeat. The banners of living leaves trailed behind them, catching wind and sunlight alike. Luke rode at the forefront, Clef beside him, both on horses, while Clefa strode with bare feet upon the earth, each step leaving faint glimmers that faded after heartbeats.
Clef whistled low.
“Damn, dude. You ever think we’d end up leading an army of tree-babes into divine war?”
“Not exactly. But Faith has a way of choosing strange roads.”
Clef laughed, adjusting the reins.
“You think that’s what this is? Faith? Meh, I call it madness. But, like, good madness, you know?”
Luke’s gaze stayed fixed ahead, as they rode towards the top of a hill. The path wound upward, the horizon widening with every step.
“What do you think we’ll find at the top?”
Luke breathed out slowly, eyes narrowing toward the growing light beyond the hill.
“I don’t know. But I have Faith.”
When they reached the crest, the world unfolded before them like a revelation.
The valley stretched wide, bathed in the golden haze of dawn, and at its far end stood a shadow that swallowed the horizon. The silhouette of a vast monastery, black stone gleaming like iron beneath the sun. Towers rose from its heart, spires wrapped in mist, and Luke knew it before he thought to name it.
The Monastery of the Mind.
The place where his journey had begun. The place where he had lost Corinne. The Holy Site that now pulsed with Alhmzoum’s stolen Faith. The target of their crusade. He felt the weight of it press against his chest, sharp and cold.
And then came the second blow.
Sound.
Cheers rising like thunder from below, rolling across the valley as thousands of voices joined into one living roar. The valley teemed with movement, banners unfurling, soldiers and zealots and Faithful gathered shoulder to shoulder. He saw the red ribbons of the House of Cheer, the silver marks of Ibesha’s warriors, the sturdy shapes of dwarves mounted upon slimes gleaming like living armor. He saw humans, dwarves, humble folk and mounted fighters all mingling with each other.
The air shimmered with Faith so strong it nearly blinded his senses.
Luke drew a breath, steady and deep, then spoke, words falling half to himself and half to the world below.
“As I walk through the shadow of the valley of the Mind, I shall fear no evil. For we are five thousand strong, and growing.”
Clef snorted.
“Look at you, turning all poetic. Never thought you broody types were up for it.”
Luke’s mouth curved faintly.
“From time to time.”
His gaze turned once more toward the monastery, toward the storm waiting within its walls and his smile evaporated.
“Come, Clef. We have a [Bishop] to kill.”
They began their descent, horses steady, banners rippling. Ahead, the sea of Faithful parted, cheers turning into waves of greeting as Lessie, Masha, Brag, and others rode to meet them. All of them converged toward Luke, the scattered sparks of Faith he had once kindled now blazing into a storm.
As the nymphs joined the throng, as songs rose and weapons lifted high, Luke looked once more toward the monastery. He saw the dark spires pierce the light, and though the emotions of grief had long been drained from him, memory still burned bright. He would never get his feelings for her back from the World Tree. He had checked.
But he remembered Corinne’s final moments, the ruin of her body, the hollow weight that had once filled him. He remembered rage and despair, pain that had once felt bottomless. He could no longer feel them as he once had, but he still remembered that he felt them.
Memory and justice, both burning in the oath inside his heart.
[Vow: In Her Name: Retribution]
Books In This Series
Faith is Earned
Faith is Earned: LitRPG, Progression Fantasy, Divine Advancement (Book 1)
If you receive my prayers, I hope you choke on them!
Faith is Earned: LitRPG, Progression Fantasy, Divine Advancement (Book 2)
Ischaratot, city of temples. And what better temple is there than the Colosseum?
Books By This Author
Gnosis Academy: LitRPG, Isekai, Magical Academy (Book 1)
School is boring? [Fireball]! Hate your teacher? [Fireball]! The pretty elf girl is making moves? ...[Fireball]?
Gnosis Academy: LitRPG, Isekai, Magical Academy (Book 2)
King of his castle. Warlord of the citadel. Guardian among the trees.
Jack of All: LitRPG, Isekai, Survival Adventure (Book 1)
Jack of all trades, master of none? Wrong! Master of all Classes, because limits are for others.
Jack of All: LitRPG, Isekai, Survival Adventure (Book 2)
Keeper of the Refuge and friend to Helmrest. One to protect and the other to help. Easier said than done.
Nemo Blanc, Faith is Earned 3
