Chapter 47

  Ben and Eve approached Kaun’s body. Ben reached toward it and saw a flurry of notifications.

  The standard series of consumable items appeared, then the loot that Ben was most anticipating.

  His eyes widened in elation.

  “Woah, a full set of mage’s gear,” Ben said.

  Eve squinted.

  “Well, necromancer’s gear. Can you use that?” Eve typed.

  Ben scratched his chin in thought while looking through his interface.

  “I could, but the main attribute it modified is Intelligence. It would be much better on one of my angels. I don’t have a necromancer angel though, so the bonuses will be wasted.”

  Eve looked at Ben in surprise.

  “You don’t have a black mage cherub? I thought you had a cherub of every class.”

  Ben gained a far-off expression.

  “Having an angel that uses black magic would be pretty off-brand, don’t you think?”

  Eve nodded dumbfoundedly. She passed on all the gear. The gear set settled into Ben’s inventory.

  Ben sighed.

  “Looks like I’ll have to trade it later.”

  Eve frowned and typed with mild agitation.

  “We cleared an entire level 10 Raid dungeon and you still haven’t found any good gear upgrades. This seems unfair.”

  Ben watched Eve type furiously. He chuckled.

  “It’s ok, Eve. The kind of faith-based gear that I need is hard to come by, as it should be. It will make it that much sweeter when we get it. I actually have the perfect place in mind. Until then, I have you by my side. You’re all I need.”

  Eve’s agitation was replaced by a predictably bashful response. She bowed her head as her face flushed red. Ben smiled warmly and turned back toward the now looted boss.

  “What we accomplished and gained from this is still a huge blessing. Let’s not lose sight of that,” Ben said.

  He made the sign of the cross, clasped his hands together, and bowed his head in prayer. Eve smiled contently and followed his lead.

  Ben began to recite and perform the entire Jesus prayer. Eve’s voice harmonized with his. The sound of their gentle prayer echoed off the walls of the chamber.

  It did not go unheard.

  As soon as the last syllable was uttered, reality tore.

  Ben and Eve opened their eyes to see a familiar sword falling from a rift in space like a comet.

  Michael’s sword.

  It appeared from above and embedded itself into the ground directly in front of them. Radiant, holy light emanated from it, burning like the sun, yet neither Ben nor Eve needed to shield their eyes.

  The corpse of the boss was burned away completely. Ben looked on in bewilderment. He looked around at the cherubs that still stood at attention. None of them had been attacking anything.

  “Why did that ability trigger?”

  As if to answer his unspoken question, another light suddenly manifested. This one was even more radiant. Out of the light appeared a familiar, overbearing figure.

  Ben looked up in awe. There he was again.

  Michael.

  The Archangel descended slowly, his presence radiating pressure that was both overwhelming and gentle at the same time.

  Ben froze. Looking at Michael was like watching a supernova. Eve collapsed to her knees. She still could hardly deal with the power of Michael’s presence.

  The archangel, adorned in Roman armor and shrouded in holy light, touched the hilt of the sword. Energy poured into the weapon. The flame along the blade grew more intense. Ben received a notification.

  [Hidden Talent, Wrath of Heaven, has evolved]

  Ben couldn’t pay attention to the details of the upgrade because Michael was already leaving.

  “Wait! Please,” Ben said.

  Michael stopped his ascent and looked down at Ben with an intense, silent gaze.

  “You…are you the real Michael? Like, truly?”

  Ben glanced away briefly. He continued.

  “I suppose if you were just a videogame character, you wouldn’t tell me.”

  Ben felt silly for asking the question, given the context. Michael’s expression softened almost imperceptibly, then he spoke.

  Ben immediately snapped to attention. Michael’s voice was like thunder. Pure, overbearing, but still gentle. Ben felt like his ears should have bled from the sheer magnitude of it, but instead he felt warmth. It was a jarring contradiction.

  “Patience, Benjamin. You were reborn for a reason. Keep to the narrow path and all shall be revealed, in time.”

  Then Michael was gone in a flash of brilliant light.

  Ben stood there, stunned. His mind raced with the implications of the archangel’s words.

  “He knew my name. He knew that I was reborn. Impossible.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The revelation was earth-shattering. Ben reeled. He looked up at the space where Michael had recently occupied, his face stricken in disbelief.

  A soft, quivering voice snapped Ben out of his shock.

  “Ben?”

  Ben looked over to the source of the voice. He immediately became alarmed.

  Eve was kneeling and staring down at her own hands. Tears streaked down her face.

  Ben rushed over in alarm.

  “Eve, what’s wrong?”

  She didn’t answer, at least not right away.

  “I…I can’t see. I can’t see.”

  Eve looked up and Ben was horrified by the sight. Her once vibrant green eyes were dulled, gray. Ben dropped to his knees in front of her and grabbed her hand.

  “I’m here. It’s ok.”

  Eve clenched tightly into Ben’s grip, clearly in a panic.

  “Ben?”

  “It’s me, Eve. I’m here.”

  His grip tightened. She bit into her bottom lip.

  “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear anything,” she said.

  Ben was mortified. He finally had the presence of mind to check her status window.

  [Player Eve has been stricken with Blindness and Deafness]

  [Duration: 100 seconds]

  “I can’t see the interface. I can’t type, I can’t log out. I-I’m scared,” Eve said.

  Ben felt sick. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Players should always have the ability to log out of the game. They should always have access to their interface, even under the most extreme debilitations.

  “This isn’t right,” he thought.

  It was temporary, but Eve couldn’t know that. She couldn’t see the timer. She couldn’t hear his voice.

  Eve’s movement caught Ben’s attention. She groped forward until she found his chest armor. She clutched at him and pulled herself against him. She sniffed deeply.

  “It’s you right?”

  Ben did something that shocked even himself. He embraced her. He wrapped her in his protective grip and tugged her close. Eve laid her head against his chest, her body quivering.

  “Please don’t let go,” she whispered helplessly.

  Ben’s grip tightened securely around her waist.

  ”I’m here, Eve. Right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He whispered back with soft, comforting words that he knew she couldn’t hear, yet somehow she seemed to calm anyway.

  Ben realized that Eve had been speaking ever since she was stricken blind. She couldn’t type. Her only option for communication was speech. Now that she spoke in full sentences, an unsettling truth was undeniable.

  She spoke with Sarah’s voice.

  Softer, meeker, far more vulnerable, but unmistakably in the voice of his past wife.

  The wife who betrayed him.

  The wife who made his life hell for years.

  In that intimate, vulnerable moment, none of that mattered. All he could focus on was comforting the trembling girl clinging to his embrace.

  The seconds seemed to stretch into eternity. Ben watched the status counter tick down slowly, with her cradled gently and protectively in his arms.

  Then it finally ended. Eve looked up and Ben watched the green slowly return to her irises in real time.

  “Ben?”

  She still spoke. Her voice was barely a whisper. He gave her a reassuring smile.

  “Hey.”

  Eve smiled faintly and laid the side of her head against his chest.

  “What happened?”

  Her voice was still shaken. Ben’s gaze drifted again.

  “Michael happened,” Ben said.

  “Michael?”

  Eve sounded shell-shocked. Ben nodded.

  “What is the last thing you remember?”

  Eve stared off into space.

  “After our prayer, the sword, then Michael. You asked him a question. When he opened his mouth, everything went dark.”

  Ben’s eyes widened in realization.

  “You didn’t hear what he said?”

  Eve shook her head.

  “Thank goodness,” Ben thought.

  He didn’t know what he would have said if she had.

  “What did he say?” Eve asked.

  Ben thought about his response. He couldn’t reveal that Michael knew his real name. He couldn’t reveal that he was reborn.

  Michael knowing his name was easier to explain. When Ben first entered the game, an angel appeared that knew his full name. At the time, he assumed it had been pulled from the purchase of the gaming helmet. Now he knew that wasn’t true.

  Michael knew about his rebirth.

  There was only one possible explanation. Angels were real. They knew who he was. They were watching. Even more shocking, they were actively entering the game to guide him.

  It was almost too much to process.

  “It’s ok if you don’t want to tell me. Maybe I wasn’t meant to know,” Eve said quietly.

  Ben shook his head to clear his thoughts.

  “He told me to keep to the narrow path. That all would be revealed in time. That’s the gist of it.”

  Eve went quiet for a long while. Her fingers clenched tighter into Ben’s chest armor.

  “I thought…he was angry at me. I thought that was judgment,” she said.

  Ben’s gaze softened.

  “Why would an angel be mad at you?”

  Eve bowed her head in shame.

  “I’m a sinner,” she said.

  Ben’s expression softened further.

  “We all are. That’s why we need divine protection and guidance. He wasn’t angry. He came to help. Look, my skill has been upgraded.”

  Eve looked at Ben’s interface in amazement. Then she noticed a few notifications in her own system window.

  “My Eyes of Truth has been upgraded as well,” she said.

  Ben raised a brow.

  “Really?”

  Eve nodded and began looking around slowly.

  “I can read the arcane inscriptions on the walls now. As if they’re written in English.”

  “Wow.”

  Ben helped Eve rise to her feet. Her legs were still unsteady. When he looked down at her, he noticed her face tinted red. She avoided his gaze bashfully. Only then did he realize how long he had been holding her.

  He forced himself to pull away, to her great disappointment.

  Ben mourned the lack of contact just as much. That familiar sweet scent of hers still lingered. Her warmth was quickly replaced by a creeping cold that reminded him of the lonely path he’d resigned himself to, before meeting her.

  Ben forced himself not to think about it and refocused.

  “See? We have nothing to fear from him.”

  Eve fidgeted, clearly bothered by the lack of contact.

  “So is it normal for angels to be so scary?”

  Ben noticed she was typing again. He inwardly sighed but didn’t bring it up. She was clearly more comfortable communicating in that way.

  “Well, biblically that’s pretty accurate. Think about the prophets and apostles who witnessed angels. Many of them fell into prostration. It depends on the angel.”

  Eve clutched into her skirt.

  “And the blindness? Is that normal?”

  Ben rubbed his chin in thought.

  “The apostle Paul was stricken blind when he heard the voice of Christ on the road to Damascus.”

  Eve’s eyes widened in recollection. Ben studied her. She was still shaken.

  His protective instinct overruled the emotional walls he’d put up that kept everyone at a distance. He stepped closer and gently laid a hand against her cheek. She leaned desperately into his palm.

  “That’s enough for today,” he said softly. “It’s getting late. We both have church tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”

  Eve breathed a long sigh of relief.

  “Thank you,” she typed.

  Ben nodded.

  “You did amazing today, Eve. Enjoy your Sunday. Lord willing, I’ll see you bright and early Monday morning.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “Goodnight, Eve.”

  “Goodnight.”

  They both logged off at the same time, leaving the mysteries of Eternity for another day.