The other Oaths trooped into the room slowly. Each Oath took their time. They did not come in side by side or in some kind of chaotic line. They came in one after the other with almost a thirty-minute delay between each Oath’s arrival.

  Inevitability and Shield entered together, walking side by side, held in some conversation Desolation couldn’t hear. Not that he was trying to.

  They took their seats, dressed casually, like people in their living room. Then again, so was almost all the Oaths in attendance. Only the new Oaths dressed as if they were attending something that required some level of decorum.

  Madness and his wife were the last. They walked in with the massive man playing video games on a handheld console. With his size, the device was almost invisible in his hands. Never looking up from his console, Madness walked into the room as if he had the entire layout inside his mind.

  From the first meeting it was clear that the Oath’s wife did not like the Oath of Life so Desolation was left in utter confusion when she strolled right up to the old man and sat next to him. Madness took the chair next to her, disposing himself into it with a childlike reckless abandon.

  The woman turned and gave Life a friendly smile.

  What the hell happened in the past three days? Desolation wondered, confused.

  He’d spent his last three days trying to make friends and had come to a simple understanding. First was that Pain didn’t have any friends and didn’t like any friends. He was also always a man in pain. Desolation had no idea why someone would choose to be the Oath of Pain. God knew he could never see himself wanting power to the point of living in constant pain.

  Grace was kind but she was more like a customer service officer or a home room teacher for children below the age of seven. Desolation wasn’t entirely sure how to put it. But if he was to try, he would say that she wasn’t kind, she was polite. Annoyingly polite. She was the kind of person that would forgive you because you didn’t know better.

  Desolation found people like that to be a little irksome. Grace was not irksome.

  Fear was a bit of an irritation to him. She wasn’t a bad person, not by a long shot. If anything, she was nice and possessed an adequate level of politeness, but mostly cautious. Desolation just didn’t like how she made him feel. The brief time he spent around her was spent with her giving him odd looks.

  He didn’t think it was intentional, though. There was just something in the way she had looked at him no matter what he said. As if he was hiding something and she was trying to fish out what it was. Perhaps if she looked long enough, she would’ve found it.

  Desolation knew with a childlike certainty that he didn’t want her finding whatever it was that she wanted to find.

  Life hadn’t stayed in the same building, so he hadn’t gotten to see the old man. Although, there was a part of him that felt like nothing good would’ve come from visiting the old man.

  Shield was never in her room the two times he visited.

  Inevitability attended to him at the door, not letting him into his room. Only a few minutes talking with Inevitability showed Desolation why he led the group. He had a leader’s aura to him. Speaking with clear and concise words, he never insinuated anything. There was just something that came with talking to the man that had you feeling as if he would lead you to where you have to be.

  Inevitability allowed him to guide the conversation, steering him away from discussions surrounding Madness or his wife. As for discussions regarding the other Oaths and their relationships with each other, he assured him that as argumentative and discordant as the other Oaths felt, they meant well.

  As for if all the Oaths alive were present, the answer had been simple. No. There were Oaths out there in the world that never attended the meetings. The Oath of Pride and the Oath of Greed were two Oaths that never attended. Inevitability went the extra mile to point out that Greed was actively known to not be good. In fact, there was a task force actively hunting him since he was a powerful threat to humanity.

  Desolation wasn’t sure how exactly to feel about that.

  On the chairs opposite him, Life, Madness and Madness’ wife sat quietly. Madness’ wife had her attention on the entire room, and part of it on Madness. Madness played on his console that had no sound, and Life kept pointing things out on the video game without saying a word. He was like a new dog owner, trying to associate with the dog while being equally terrified by the fact that the dog could bite him at any time.

  Life was currently living proof that even if Madness did not intend on it, he was a menace. Unfortunately, it was clear that Madness intended on it, and his wife reveled in it. Again, not for the first time, Desolation found himself wondering why they even let the woman in.

  “I hope everyone had a restful stay these past few days,” Inevitability said, starting the meeting.

  Fear raised a polite hand. “Am I the only one that got the notification a few days ago? I thought it was an Oath thing.”

  Desolation said nothing, keeping his eyes on everyone present. Fear had not been the only one to get a notification. Even his interface had given him a notification. Something about a potential world level threat, a request for help, and a warning to stay away.

  It had freaked him out for the five minutes he’d had it.

  Inevitability looked around, eyeing every Oath at the meeting. “I got the notification, too,” he said. “The one about the pure mana overload?”

  Fear nodded.

  “I have informed the necessary people,” he said. “And I promise you that an investigation is already being conducted as regards the notification.”

  “Are you sure they’re going to find anything?” Pain asked.

  “He has a point,” Fear said before Inevitability could answer. “It didn’t even take up to five minutes before I got the second notification about the threat being handled. Who handles world class threats? Has there ever been a world class threat before?”

  Inevitability, Shield, Grace, Life, Pain, and Madness’ wife turned crestfallen all of a sudden. There was a deep solemnity on their faces, like people in mourning.

  “Over two decades ago,” Inevitability said, tone sad. “We had one over two decades ago.”

  Fear looked around. She wasn’t the only one confused. Desolation and Language were also confused. Chances were that it was on account of the three of them being new to the Oath-hood.

  What happened over two decades ago?

  “What happened over two decades ago?” Language asked, pulling the words right out of Desolation’s head.

  “There was a portal,” Shield said.

  “And they sent all of us into it,” Pain added, seeming annoyed.

  Language looked at the old Oaths. “All of you?”

  Who had the power to send all the Oaths out into a portal? Was Inevitability in greater control than they made it seem.

  “Not all of us,” Inevitability answered. “Pride had not joined. Neither had Shield.”

  Desolation and the two other new Oaths turned Shield. Fear squinted as if looking for something.

  “Why?” Language asked.

  “Because I am a Shield,” the Oath of Shield answered. “A shield is not an offensive weapon. It is a defensive one. Since taking up my Oath, I have not been allowed into portals. On the flip side, I am stronger during a Chaos Run since I gain strength in the presence of an [Intruder].”

  Desolation hadn’t known that.

  “So how did you all agree on that?” Language asked. “No offense but I was present at the last meeting. Sounds to me like none of you can ever come to an agreement over anything, talk less of going into a portal as a team.”

  “Each Oath present at this table has a team of their own,” Life said, tossing his hat in the conversation, metaphorically speaking. “This is something of a council of Oaths and each Oath is a powerhouse.”

  Shield gave him a look as if she was surprised to learn that he knew what he knew.

  Unbothered by her expression, Life continued. “Inevitability has his own company—of sorts—and his own team of high ranked Gifted who follow him into portals that he goes into. Portals that high ranked Delvers cannot go into without almost certainly losing their lives.”

  “So, you… what? Sent in your teams?” Fear asked.

  “It didn’t need a conversation,” Pain said. There was no annoyance in his voice, only pain and solemnity. “Just like the notification you received, we all received a notification when the portal appeared. With awareness of what direction it was coming from.”

  “Portals are like injuries on a body to Oaths,” Inevitability pointed out. “Each portal is like a small cut or pinprick. If you’ve ever gone out to have fun only to take a shower in the morning and find out that you got an inconsequential injury somewhere you can only feel when water touches it, then you know how a low rank portal appearing feels like to us Oaths.”

  “But without the pain?” Language asked. It was clear that she had no plans of feeling pain.

  Grace shook her head. “Only Pain feels the pain. The rest of us are just vaguely aware of it. Almost the same way Madness is probably, maybe, vaguely aware of us.”

  “But that portal was different,” Life said with a sad look. “Everyone was aware of where it was.”

  “The fuck are you sad about?” Pain snapped at him. “You weren’t even there.”

  Life looked into his eyes with something Desolation couldn’t quite place in his eyes. “But I was aware of the cost. You know just as well as I do what it feels like when we die.”

  Pain looked like he had something to say but didn’t. Something passed between the both of them, like a shared understanding between enemies.

  Desolation had no idea what they were talking about.

  “We all came together to face the threat,” Grace said. “Portals are categorized by ranks but we knew that there was no one but us that could handle the portal.”

  “Why?” Language asked.

  Desolation continued to hold his tongue. He had a plan, and his plan involved being as forgettable as possible for whatever period of time the meeting was to go on for. He needed to be perceived as unimportant and harmless.

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  He didn’t need to be perceived as Desolation right now. What he needed was to be perceived as desolate.

  “Because the portal wasn’t ranked,” Grace said.

  Desolation had never heard of a portal without a rank. Every portal had a rank.

  “This one,” Grace continued, “was just classified. Our interfaces called it a world threat.”

  Fear grimaced. “How many Delvers died in it before you all went in?”

  “None,” Inevitability answered. “We have an understanding with all the governments of the world. Portals, S-rank and above, are always brought to our attention before rights to delving into it are auctioned to whatever Delving company wishes to own them.”

  Desolation was a little surprised. “And they comply?” he asked, unable to stop himself. “Just like that?”

  “Uhuh,” Grace replied. “They’d be stupid not to. The Oaths, in their own way, are stronger than almost any S-rank you pit us against.”

  “Almost?”

  “Almost,” Life echoed. “Only a fool who has not fought against every single man in the world would claim to be stronger than every single man in the world.”

  “Thank you, Life,” Grace said politely. She was the first Oath Desolation was hearing use those words since coming to Nigeria. “As I was saying,” she continued, returning her attention to him. “There is almost no government that is not aware of just how strong we are. So, if you think about it, only a foolish government would not make that agreement with us.”

  And Desolation thought about it. He did not need to think for long. He was Desolation and saw the desolation that could come.

  “If they decide to hide portals for whatever reason,” he said, coming to an understanding, “then we could all simply say no when a portal appears that they need our help with.”

  “If reason does not guide them,” Fear said simply. “Then fear will.”

  “So, the country that had this gate reached out to you all?” Language asked.

  “They mostly reach out to Inevitability,” Shield answered. “He is something of the face of the Oaths. But no, in that case they reached out to Pain. It happened in his country, after all. He was the first to see the portal.”

  “Then he reached out to Inevitability who reached out to the others through the message that you all received inviting you to come here,” Grace said. “We saw the portal and confirmed how dangerous it was.”

  “Apart from Shield—” Inevitability began.

  “—And Life,” Pain added with some venom in his voice.

  “—We all went in,” Inevitability finished. “The outcome was less than favorable.”

  Pain snorted in derision. “Less than favorable? That’s a nice way to put it.”

  “Pain,” Grace said kindly, gently. “Not now.”

  “Not now?” Pain hissed. “We lost more than half our numbers to that Portal. And he belittles it all the way to ‘Less than favorable.’ There was nothing less than favorable about it.” His voice got caught in his throat and he choked on his words. A tear slipped from his eye, running down his cheek. "It was a bloody massacre."

  Madness’ wife looked at him with a touch of pity or understanding or sadness. Desolation wasn’t sure which one it was.

  “When we closed the portal and got out,” Inevitability continued. “We gave portals like that a designation.”

  Fear’s eyes widened in, unsurprisingly, fear. “There are portals like that turning up left and right?”

  Inevitability shook his head. “No. We haven’t seen another of its kind since it’s appearance. Thank God for that.”

  “We were never ready for a named portal,” Life said. “My entire life, I had never come across one. We were never ready.”

  “A named portal?” Desolation said, latching onto it.

  Life nodded. “Portals that don’t have ranks. Instead, they have names.”

  “What was the name of that one?” Language asked.

  Life looked at her and Desolation could see a shadow of the desolation he must have felt when the portal had appeared. It had terrified the man.

  When he spoke, the desolation was also in his voice.

  “Heaven’s Gate.”

  “And the wrongest thing was waiting for us,” Pain muttered with some finality in his voice.

  “There was nothing heavenly in there,” Shield muttered.

  Grace shrugged. “The angels were angelic enough in my opinion. Definitely heavenly.”

  Surprisingly, it got a snort out of Inevitability. “Only because they were polite to you.”

  “They tried to kill the rest of us the moment we told them we couldn’t leave without closing the portal,” Pain muttered.

  “Secrecy was so mad when he found out that they were all hiding something as a collective,” Inevitability said with a touch of nostalgia in his voice. A small smile touched his lips.

  “We should’ve just left it alone,” Pain muttered with a touch of anger. “I swear we brought it on ourselves.”

  “It was the only way to clear the portal,” Grace said. “There was nothing we could’ve done about it.”

  “Was it?” he asked her. “Was it really? The quest only got the update when Secrecy said the angels were hiding something from us.”

  Fear looked at Desolation, then Language. “Am I the only one who’s finding it difficult to get past the part where they are talking about fighting against angels?”

  Desolation shook his head. Language, too.

  “On the bright side,” Language offered, “they didn’t go to hell.”

  “That bastard could’ve been the devil and I’d still rather have gone to hell.” Pain shuddered visibly. “Those green eyes. That look that said we were unimportant. That casual dismissive sense of superiority.”

  Desolation wasn’t sure if he was imagining it or not, but he could’ve sworn that he caught a faint smile on Madness’ lips. Was it the game or Pain’s words.

  “You shouldn’t have freed him,” Shield said.

  Inevitability shook his head in disagreement. “That ended up being the quest. It was a secret bonus objective. You know how good Secrecy was at getting one of those. The moment we freed him, we got a quest cleared notification.”

  “Then an emergency quest,” Grace said with pain in her eyes. “Sometimes I have nightmares about it. I can still remember the emergency quest. Word for word.”

  “Defeat the founder, vanquish the first [Namer],” Inevitability said, as if reading the words from memory.

  “Did you ever find out what he was the founder of?” Language asked.

  Inevitability, Pain and Grace shook their heads.

  “What of what a [Namer] is?” she asked. “Is it like a class or something?”

  “No idea.” Inevitability sighed. “We never got to confirm it. When we got back, I put in a mandatory request to all the governments. If anyone ever turned up with the [Namer] class, we were to be informed of it. More than twenty years later and we still haven’t gotten any update.”

  Language didn’t look so crestfallen. If anything, she had other interests. “How did you win the fight?”

  Pain shot her an incredulous look. “Win?”

  “You said you lost a few Oaths and closed the portal.” She looked at him, confused. “I assumed you won the fight.”

  She was answered with a simple sentence from the most unexpected Oath.

  “We didn’t win,” Madness said, never taking his attention from his video game. His voice was a deep baritone. A rumble that Desolation felt in his chest.

  The Oath said nothing more.

  Language waited a little longer, hoping that he would use more words, explain. Madness did not.

  She looked at Inevitability. “I don’t get it.”

  “We fought with everything we had,” Inevitability said in explanation. “But nothing we did to him seemed to work. Skills just bounced off him or shattered against him. He didn’t even seem to care for Grace’s presence. He is the first and only intelligent being that I’ve seen that didn’t show even an ounce of politeness towards Grace.”

  “I don’t think he had any politeness to give,” Grace said.

  “In the end, we gave up on skills and just went all in,” Inevitability continued. “Fists and guns and everything we had. Funny enough, the angels didn’t even come to our aid or to interrupt us. The moment we freed their prisoner they just disappeared as if they were scared of him.”

  “Never a good idea to fight something angels are afraid of,” Life muttered under his breath.

  “It was only when Madness held him down and started pounding away that we survived.” Inevitability looked at the unbothered Oath with a touch of gratitude. “He sacrificed himself so that we could escape. How he managed to make it out in time is beyond us.”

  Desolation stared at Madness, confused. He’d just developed a newfound appreciation for the Oath. It wasn’t respect, not really. It was an understanding of the man’s strength. It told him that when he finally made a move, he would have to go all out from the start.

  It is necessary, he told himself. Madness was not good or bad. He was unstable. You did not leave a nuclear weapon in the hands of a child. Things would not end well.

  “How many Oaths were lost?” Fear asked, addressing the subject that everyone had been ignoring.

  “Ten,” Pain answered. “And only because he seemed to be satisfied with the number. He stopped actively trying to kill us when the tenth Oath died.”

  Fear winced. “It must’ve been tough. Sorry for your loss.”

  All the old Oaths present nodded in acceptance, even Madness’ wife. Even though she hadn’t been a part of the fight, Desolation could understand how she could share in the pain. If Madness was always bringing her along with him for every meeting, then she would’ve known the other Oaths. They would’ve at least been something of friends to her.

  Regardless, they would have to change a few things. They couldn’t grant a civilian a place amongst them just because of favoritism. He didn’t think it was right.

  Is that really what you think the problem is? He asked himself, knowing that it was not.

  In truth, he was just alienating Madness and his wife in his mind, making them out to not belong. It would make what he planned on doing to the Oath easier to stomach. He was not a bad guy, but sometimes less than acceptable things had to be done for the greater good.

  “So, in summary, we shouldn’t be worried about the notification we got a few days ago?” Fear asked, bringing them back to what had started this conversation.

  “Like I said before, an investigative team has been sent out,” Inevitability answered. “Seeing as all of us also got the notification saying that the threat has been handled, we can all put it from our minds. The interface never lies.”

  Desolation really hoped that was true. He’d never been in a situation where his interface had given him a false piece of information, but he wasn’t one to blindly trust anything he was given, even if it was his own interface.

  Inevitability looked at everyone. Confirming that the conversation was done, he said, “Now that we’ve addressed that, let’s finish up with the real reason we are—”

  The sound of Fear taking in a very deep breath interrupted his words and everyone turned to look at her. She met their gazes with an apologetic one.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “It’s just that the fear everybody was displaying was just too much. I couldn’t just ignore it. It’s kind of my thing. If it’s any consolation, Madness isn’t scared. His wife is, though.”

  Of course his wife was. A being that was capable of killing ten Oaths in a fight terrified Desolation, and he was an Oath.

  Now that he thought about it, he wondered what the woman’s class was. Was she going to be a problem when he went after her husband? Was he going to be able to subdue her without killing her?

  A well placed blow should incapacitate her. But what if he had to kill her?

  Desolation didn’t like the direction of his thought. The acceptance of collateral damage in achieving your goal was the first step to going down the wrong path. Killing Madness was necessary, but no matter how much of a problem his wife could be, Desolation couldn’t find a justification for killing her.

  All things must come to an end.

  It was a simple thought, straight forward.

  When you bring the end, everything ends.

  Desolation winced as the thoughts bubbled inside his head. They came from a part of his mind that he didn’t understand. It was as if he was talking to himself, but he was not in control of his own words. They were his ideas, just ideas that he could not suppress.

  Just because you were killing the leader of a terrorist organization, it did not mean you had to kill all the terrorists. You could always arrest those who surrendered.

  All things come to an end.

  This didn’t always happen, but it happened enough times. And the thoughts had no choice of appearance. It popped up when thinking about a fight as easily as it popped up when he didn’t want to finish the food on his plate. Desolation had never left food on his plate since he’d become desolation.

  Everything had to be left desolate. Even a plate of food.

  Desolation settled his gaze on Madness. This time, his wife was a part of it. One was a necessity. The other was avoidable, but would he avoid it?

  Nothing had changed. Madness still had to die.

  “Alright,” Inevitability said, resuming whatever he’d been saying before Fear had interrupted him as he turned to Madness’ wife. “It is time to finalize a decision on the [August Intruder].”

  “I already said that they were not a threat,” the woman said with a tired sigh.

  But your husband is, Desolation thought. Your husband is.

  “He might not be a threat,” Inevitability said. “But he is now a powerhouse. As such, he needs to be treated and handled as such. His own protection detail. His own team of S-class Delvers. I assume he would need to enter portals. If he is inexperienced, he will need to be taught and trained. And if he is anything like the Oaths, he will need to be taught control.”

  Grace raised her hand. “I think I should be a part of anything that has to do with meeting him.”

  Inevitability gave it a momentary thought before nodding. “You have proven to be the best at being around Oaths, so I don’t see why not.”

  A disgusted smile touched Madness’ wife’s lips and her hand balled into a fist on the table.

  “You all have not changed,” she said with a very menacing voice. “Who has led any of you to believe that you get to meet the [August Intruder] without my permission?”

  Arrogant, Desolation thought. She was feeding off of the caution everyone present had towards her husband.

  “Aurora, let’s be reasonable about this,” Inevitable said kindly. “I understand your anger with Shield but this is a matter of the safety of humanity.”

  “Oh, yes,” Madness’ wife, Aurora, said. “And I’m making this decision for the safety of humanity. If anything, a normal person we can trust should be the one handling it.”

  “Like you?” Pain spat. “I can’t find myself trusting you.”

  “And with all due respect,” Desolation added. “You’re not an Oath.”

  Aurora cocked a brow at him as if she was surprised to find a child speaking at the adult’s table.

  “I might have a solution to that,” Life interrupted, raising his hand.

  All eyes settled on him.

  “A solution?” Grace asked.

  Life nodded. “If you all need someone powerful but also understanding of the stakes and is also completely normal and not really Oath-like, I know just the person.”

  “None of us trust you just yet, Life,” Inevitability said. “It can’t be you.”

  Life laughed in good nature. “God I’m as cooked in the head as the lot of you. I was talking about someone else. Another Oath.”

  Now he definitely had everyone’s attention.

  “There is an Oath that is normal that we don’t know about?” Shield asked.

  Life nodded.

  “And you know about this Oath?” she said. “You know about this Oath that is normal that nobody else at this table knows about?”

  “I know about a lot of things that you all don’t know about, child,” Life informed her. “And yes, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  Shield opened her mouth to say more but Inevitability silenced her with a polite gesture.

  “And what Oath is this?” he asked.

  Life gave what Desolation was now beginning to think of as his trademark grin. Annoying and pretentiously all knowing. He was really beginning to dislike the man. Not enough to want to kill him, though.

  With the grin, Life gave his answer.

  “The Oath of Humanity.”