"So…"
The eye began.
"I heard you were just born. Happy Birthday."
Tavja nodded
"Thanks, you heard from the request right?"
"Haha, yes indeed, it was told in the audience request…"
Tavja nodded again
"I see, word travels fast. So you know why I'm here as well right?"
"Haha indeed, indeed…"
The eye laughed nervously.
"..."
"..."
"....Hey so, since you were just born, I'm guessing you don't know much about Neel! How about this, I could-"
"Let's do the name first." Tavja cut him off with a smile, not bothering with being polite.
"H-Hey come on, what's the rush? You're a Devil right? What's a couple years? I'll offer a couple of years of educational- "
"Name please."
"YOU DARE INTERRUPT A DIVINE BEING AGAIN!? IT SEEMS MY BENEVOLENCE HAS BEEN A LITTLE TOO-"
"Name or I leave."
"Ok, ok… I'm sorry about the outburst earlier. I-I'm just a little on edge here. No one ever comes up here…. Young one, m-mayhaps you can find it in your heart to listen to an old mans ta-"
"The name."
"....."
"As. Promised."
With a resigned sigh, the eye just hollowly nodded. Left finally understood the devil he was dealing with would most likely take none of his practiced bait.
'Likely a young devil with large amounts, if not all, of her ancestral knowledge.'
"Sigh, very well." With that, the eye blinked, and a book appeared before the two of them.
Though the assumption was a bit off, Tavja indeed knew the kind of entity she was dealing with.
Tavja smiled at the appearance of the book, but she also couldn't help but sneer at the eye in her heart.
'This cringey bastard was really planning on trapping me here for years to gossip, when my cold handsome, and divine powers are waiting for me in Hellnia? Guess again!'
She knew the golden rule for dealing with the Left eye was to finish all transactions first. Despite the eye just being…well an eye, he was infamous in the lore for being a chatterbox. An extreme one at that. If he could, he would most likely lock the exit gates of his domain to keep visitors here to gossip. A good thing this place has rules.
"sigh…The book before you are all the names the Master has created for you. Sigh…of course…sigh… the name you will take will be determined by your soul's proclivities…sigh."
"Ok." Tavja answered, somewhat absentmindedly. She did not care about the pitiful looks coming from Left every third word, or the sighs that followed. What made her mind distracted was how the Observer bestowed names.
'I thought he would just give me a name and be done with it, what's the purpose of generating a book of names like this? And what did he mean by soul's proclivities? Is there some hidden lore here? Should I ask?'
She glanced up at the eye and immediately decided to just go in blind. The eye was still looking pitiful, but there was a subtle gleam there that made her scalp numb.
She decided to trust her instincts and proceed with ignorance.
Seeing that the little devil had no intention of asking questions, giving him a reason to tell the story of how his master once had a tryst with a chaos devil leading to the promised wish pact, the eye could only deflate more and continue.
"Sighhhhh… Ok, I will show you some pictures and you tell me the first thing that comes to mind. After this, a name from the book will choose you."
Tavja nodded. It sounded easy enough, this wasn't mentioned in the book but it seemed inconsequential since the name was still coming from the observer. A name from a high god was still good in itself.
Left blinked and a piece of white paper appeared on the table. The paper had seemingly random, manic strokes on it. It wasn't the typical blotches of mirrored patterns one might see in a certain counseling room, It was more like dense scribbles from a 2 year old. The strokes were so densely packed together, a person wouldn't know the paper was white had the edges not been left untouched.
Tavja stared at the paper strangely, then she looked up at Left, her eyes incredulous.
"What's the matter, young one?"
"It's just… Isn't this picture a little too obvious? Wouldn't everyone just have the same answer seeing this?"
Left 'raised an eyebrow'. "Oh? Then tell me, what is it that you see?"
Tavja shook her head, what was the point of this?
"It's just a rose." she answered
"A rose you say? Look closer, is that all?" The eye questioned, his eye brimming with mirth.
Outside of gossiping, he enjoyed seeing one's soul discover itself. The process was always different.
Tavja looked at the paper once more with confusion. As if finally noticing, she spoke again.
"Ah, yeah the field where the rose is planted… the roots seem to be growing from a mountain of corpses. Huh, how did I miss that?"
Tavja muttered. The picture seemed to be a bit more detailed than she initially thought. But it didn't really change her opinion about this 'test'.
"Are the corpses male or female?" The eye inquired.
"Hmm..both, but mainly women, are they humans? I can't tell."
Left ignored the question.
"Okay, on to the next one. What do you see in this one? Look closely, this one is a bit harder."
Left then produced a new piece of paper. This one had nothing but circles, starting from the center going outward. As before, the drawing was so packed together, the only defining parts indicating it as white paper were the edges.
This time Tavja gazed at the paper a little longer than last time. After a while she looked up and answered confidently.
"It's a person. They are gazing down at the plane in the night sky. Everyone is looking back at them, they see the person, nothing more. But the person seems to be seeing more when they look at everyone else. The person is sitting in the sky where the moon should be, and the stars circle around them."
"Is this person you?"
"No."
"....Are you in the picture at all?"
"No."
Tavja shook her head, did this guy think she was a narcissist or something? She was just answering what she saw. The pictures weren't even abstract!
"Very good, now the last picture."
Left Direction produced the last picture. A near blank paper, the only marking on it was a single vertical line.
Tavja glanced at the paper, and her brows began to furrow.
The Left eye chuckled.
"Yes yes, I understand your confusion, you should know that the first two tend to be different for everyone. Not everyone sees a flower in the field, or a person in the sky like you did. Both will show intricate pictures for your eyes only."
Tavja nodded in understanding. It seems this is some sort of magic trick, though strangely, she couldn't feel even a hint of mana on the papers like she did on the temple statue. And unlike the previous two detailed pictures, this one had a simple marking on it.
"I see. So this simple mark means something different? "
Left nodded and continued. "The last is mostly the same to everyone. A simple vertical line, haha, I can't tell you it's meaning, but rest assured, it's a good-"
"Line?" Tavja questioned, her slender brows still pressed together.
"Hm? Yes the line here-"
Left gestured to the line but paused midway, a creeping suspicion growing within him.
"You…you do see a line on that paper…. don't you?"
Tavja looked down at the mark once again. She shook her head, denying the visual of the vertical line Left mentioned. She didn't notice that something was off about Left's countenance when she did that.
Left, with his eye slightly wider than usual, asked.
"If you're not seeing the anchor, what is it that you see?"
As Tavja gazed at the mark, it was indeed simple, just different. She spoke curiously.
"It's a…Spiral?"
~~~
Somewhere in between, the Observatory.
Sitting on an elegant white chair, a hooded figure gazed out of the glass wall of the dome shaped room suspended in the sky. As he looked at the two seated at the table far below him, he sipped on a sparkling black substance filled within his teacup.
He grimaced a bit with each subsequent sip, but he continued on, knowing the sugar to be added would arrive soon. He just had to endure, no way would he leave his seat to get it, and no way would he drink something cold. He just had to trust fate and hold out until he could finally taste something that suited him.
As his 6 empty eye sockets continued to watch the little girl and his subordinate choose a name for the young devil, the figure smiled as he watched their interactions.
"It won't be long now." He simply said, as he took another sip.
"Ugh…It's really bland." He grimaced again, but he sipped once more.
"Ugh…An artificial, tiring taste." He sipped again. The figure gagged this time.
"Urk!...B-but soon, a little sugar should bring back the spice, hehe..urk!"
"Master, if you don't like it so much, why don't you wait for the sugar to be added to the mix before tasting again?"
An exasperated voice spoke beside the hooded figure. The figure turned to look at the individual. A black eye the size of a basketball floated at the side of the hooded figures chair. The red iris of the eye gazed at the figure, unable to comprehend why its Master would put up with such a taste when he simply needed to stop drinking it all in.
The hooded entity scoffed at those words.
"Principle, all is done in principle Right. If a god did not fulfill their role faithfully, who would believe in them?"
The black eye, Right Direction, nodded in deference. But she couldn't help voice her doubts.
"What about the gods currently governing their parts of Neel? They seem to put their roles second to their own glory. Yet they stay gods all the same. Why is that?" she questioned
The observer laughed at those words, gods? Hardly.
"Haha Right, always the skeptic. Your curious and questioning eye is why I gave you the authority to gaze at the other worlds. Right Direction, the Observer's eye that gazes beyond."
He said with a smile.
Right squinted at her Master. Clearly aware he did not answer the question.
"Fine, fine, I'll tell you. But first let me ask you something. Why is it that those children build shrines, temples, and churches everywhere they can on the planes of Neel?" He asked meaningfully.
Right's eye looked to the metallic floor, lost in thought. After a while, she answered.
"Well, if no one worshiped them, they would lose their divinity and authority. Making them mortal again." She replied.
The Observer nodded. "Indeed." he agreed. "But tell me, how is it that, in all of Neel…" he pointed to the young girl sitting in front of Left studying pictures in front of her. "...That little one is the only being alive that knows my name, yet I am divine regardless."
The Eye was stunned for a moment but shook her 'head'.
"Master, that's different, you brought her here when I saw her at that demon planet, you witnessed her passion of your prophecy, of course she-"
The observer shook his head. "Right, you are missing the point, though you are the youngest, you are not a child, think carefully. How did I bring her here?"
Right wanted to say by killing her and placing her soul in a blank vessel for 60 years, but she knew that wasn't really the answer he was looking for.
Then a thought occurred to her.
"You..you used divine power to bend the rules…but, if that's the case…" Right finally figured out what her Master was trying to say.
"That's right, a god is truly a god when there is no need for those to worship you. None to know your name, when the universe itself acknowledges your existence…ugh." He finished her thought as he took another sip.
"I see, as expected of the Master. So Principles are what makes a god a god! Diligence and responsibility will gain the acknowledgement of the world, not popularity, truly insightful!"
"....Indeed." The observer glanced at the Eye bowing beside him. While it was true he fulfilled his role for millions of years on principle and gained the rights for immortalization from the Beginning, he would never expose the fact that he did his job because of a crippling compulsion to do his tasks rather than a sense of righteous responsibility.
'Well, not much of a difference. Now sip number 782,393,543,261,037,251…ugh bland again, this era sucks!'
As The observer continued to posture, Right Direction all of a sudden began to subtly vibrate. Her eye flashed and she turned to her master once more.
"Master, I've received a message from brother regarding the devil's soul discovery."
The Eye looked a bit alarmed as she spoke, but the observer paid it no heed.
"Oh? Do tell, what is your analysis?" the entity asked, unbothered by the urgency Right was beginning to show.
She quickly answered. "W-well, the first seems to be related to romance as the primary and slaughter as the secondary. A rose that blooms with the blood of others, a peculiar combination, but nothing out of the ordinary."
"I see. The conscious body of a Luxuria variant. The aggression is a little weird though, continue." He said simply as he sipped from his teacup, at ease.
"The second seems to be related to admiration? I-I think? An entity living amongst the stars, gazing at the world below. The entity is inferred to be all seeing, a god maybe, but she seems to not be included in the individuals looking up at the entity."
The observer paused for a bit at those words, but he just chuckled in the end. "Interesting, not surprising given where she originates from. It is the subconscious heart of obsession though, not admiration. She sees what the entity in her picture sees, she sees herself as the special case amongst the masses, thus she is not included."
"I understand, thank you for the correction."
The observer waved his hand dismissively. He was fine with educating his subordinates, there hasn't been a guest in his realm in quite some time, so her ignorance was understandable.
"And the mark? I'm assuming she got the anchor? The common soul of destiny?"
The eye did not reply immediately, which did not escape her master's notice. He raised an eyebrow at her hesitation.
"Could it be that she saw the branch? The soul of the anomalous fate?" His brows furrowed; The anomalous fate is quite hard to read. Most with such a soul are used as pawns by the higher level entities to push their little agendas, with their fluctuating destinies, changing the outcomes of timelines seen can be possible to an extent.
But to the observer's surprise the eye shook her 'head'. "N-no Master, brother says she saw…. the spiral. And he is requesting permission to eliminate her at once."