ROD - Chapter 131

Chapter One-Hundred-Thirty-One – Gambit – Part Two

Problems can often exist without people, whereas solutions rarely can.

-UWO Specialist Novak-

Pain is my existence… darkness swells around me.

Did Mythren activate his protection when I spoke the phrase? I remember purple light engulfing me…

Heat is my muse when the cold embrace of death’s door seeps in and out of the marrow of my soul. Sounds pierce the veil of my sanity as I feel the energy of a god trying to compress into a mortal coil.

A voice standing above me brings my thoughts to reality.

“What have you done?”

My eyes open and I see Mythren taking shape in front of me.

“You have ruined my plans, mortal. You have put everything I have worked for at risk. For what? One world? Pride? What is your reason for dooming the cosmos?” Mythren asks.

My face contorts in pain as I say, “We can win.”

He shakes his head, “No, we cannot, for you do not yet know the extent of true power. You have glimpsed it in passing. You used borrowed power and tricks to do things a mortal cannot normally do. Yet it will not save your world. Not even I can do that now.”

“Help me…”

“Help you?” he asks, there is no disdain in his face, only disappointment as he says, “I tried to. My reward will likely be the dismantling of my systematic approach to rebel. Everything I have spent nearly a hundred thousand years working on… gone. Because you could not listen, because I did not cull you as I should have. Because I was soft and…”

“Love is not weakness,” I say, looking at him fully, light blossoms in runes on my spirit as runes begin to form in the void of immense power. Runes that the Jimminites showed me in memories.

He looks at me strangely, “I do not love you mortal.”

“I know, but you love the ones that are tied to me.”

He swallows.

“Sage and Terra, the reason you wanted access to my nexus. It wasn’t to reprimand me or destroy me, it was so you could protect them directly, because they are tethered to me, aren’t they?”

His brow furrows, complex emotions that I’m sure he isn’t used to feeling cross his normally placid face.

“They’re your parents… aren’t they?”

He blinks at me, “How did you know?”

I stagger to my feet in the endless void of darkness he has summoned me in, “You are not like most admins, you care. I can see it in your eyes, feel it in your actions.”

“That does not explain how…”

“In your eyes I see a person who has known the love of a mother or a father. A person who wishes to see the universe balanced, not for the sake of numbers lining up properly, but because they hear the pain. They feel the atrocities of the games and the System and the gods.”

He does not speak, but he takes a step back and looks away slowly.

“You care, Mythren, there is no shame in such a thing, only beauty.”

His breath comes out slow as he says quietly, “It doesn’t matter what I feel now. There is nothing that can be done. Sariel is far older and far stronger than me. Even if I were to summon all of my power, I would not be enough to face him. One does not receive the name Endless One without being formidable.”

My eyes burn like twin suns as more runes form upon my soul. Runes that never would have been possible if Mythren wasn’t suspending my body and soul in his protection whilst we speak. Allowing the power to settle and form.

“Mythren,” I begin, looking up at him again, he tilts his head at me as his eyes trace the runes that grow brighter, “I don’t need you to fight Sariel.”

He blinks, moving closer to examine them, “What do you mean?”

“I’m going to kill him. In exchange, I want you to protect Earth.”

His eyes trace up from the runes that spindle and weave, “He cannot be killed. Not even I know where his core is. Even if you find him in the flesh, unless you destroy his core, he will return, again and again until his power is extinguished.”

“How long would that take?”

Mythren shakes his head, “Millennia if I was at the same level as him.”

“How do I find his core?”

“You don’t,” he sighs, pointing to the runes, “What are you doing?”

“Reshaping my soul.”

“Such a thing should not be possible for a mortal though…” he tilts his head, a flicker of curiosity blooms as his purple eyes brighten, “How did you learn such things?”

“Long story.”

He looks around, “Time is slowed here, I had to bring it to a crawl, or else you would have exploded in seconds.”

“How long until Sariel appears on Earth?”

“A few hours in this space, minutes on Earth.”

“Shit…” I breathe out.

“You picked the wrong enemy.”

“No, I just picked the wrong… time,” I look up at him, “During my proceeding they mentioned turning back time in order to bring back Azeroc… and when I first Respec’d time was reversed.”

“What are you asking?”

“If we reverse time, all of this can go away and then I can do it properly, and you won’t be under investigation.”

He doesn’t speak for a time, instead he studies the runes before saying, “It’s not possible. To reverse the timeline without the high gods and admins like myself not noticing, it requires an immense amount of mana. An amount that I do not possess.”

“What about Ulana?”

He shakes his head, “She already wounded herself reversing time for you once. Doing it again would likely kill her. Though she is like her sister, an heir of one of Akronos’s incarnations, she does not have sufficient power to do such a thing.”

An heir of Akronos’s incarnation, what the hell does that even mean… focus.  

“What about the grand one?”

He blinks at me, tilting his head, “Can the Grand One do such a thing, yes, would they... Certainly not. It is against the Source Codex for the Grand One to violate the divine timeline without the high gods agreeing to it.”

“What about Sariel, does he have the power?”

He shakes his head, “Perhaps the power to do it once, but it would vaporize him and his core to commit such a thing to an action. We are stronger than normal gods, but we are not so strong that we can do as we please. The universe is not simple. Messing with the timeline has consequences.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that either way,” I say, standing more easily now. Everything pulses with the ebb of my thoughts. The mana in me is almost sentient with my spirit tied to it so closely.

“It won’t,” Mythren says, turning around, “Here is what you will do to try and fix this.” He crosses his arms, “You will relinquish your claim of being from another world and beg Sariel to spare Earth, he won’t, but you will beg for it. He pretends to be empty, but he is cruel… very cruel. So long as he is satisfied with your suffering, he may not venture further. If he does not, and somehow the Earth is the only thing that is destroyed in his path, someday my plan will come into fruition and Earth will be avenged.”

I shake my head, “Mythren, I don’t think you’ve been listening.”

He turns to look at me again.

“Earth will not fall today. I will not allow it.”

Pity forms in his eyes as he says, “You will lose.” He takes three steps forward and looks me in the eyes, “He will take those you love first and he will relish in the suffering it brings to watch them die. He will then take your world, but he won’t kill you right away. He will ensure that you know it is your fault that everything you love ceases to exist. Only when you acknowledge that fact will he lose interest and allow you to die.”

“I won’t let him do any of that.”

Mythren sighs as he looks at his hands, “Even with this power you have accumulated, you could not even fight me, and I am weaker than him. Your loss is not a question of will, but an inevitability. You do not possess the tools to fight such a being. Nor will you ever. For they would not allow such a thing to come to pass.”

He believes what he is saying. I can feel it in the way he tries to convince me.

“You already know that you’re going to die, why not make it still count for something. Fix your mistake. Beg to satisfy his cruelty and…”

“I will not beg.”

His eyes fall lower as his hands reach his side, “Then all is lost…”

If I wasn’t connected to Sage and Terra, I am sure he would kill me where I stand and destroy my soul and any trace of my actions. But he can’t bring himself to do that. He loves them too much. In a way, I feel sorry for him. Sorry that I have put him in what feels like an impossible situation.

For the people of Earth though… impossible just means that it requires sufficient effort and willpower to overcome. We do not believe that something can be impossible. Call it insanity, call it hubris, but the people of Earth always rise to the occasion.

“I would like to say goodbye to them,” Mythren says softly with a furrowed brow, “Will you at least give me that?”

I nod, “I authorize you in my Nexus.”

He moves his hand through the air but tilts his head, “It says I cannot access it still.”

“Ah,” I say, stepping toward him, “Sorry, I forgot that I added a special key to it.”

“A special key? Where would you have learned how to alter… what have you done?”

“I can let you in, it just requires me to touch you,” I say, looking around, “We don’t happen to be inside your core right now… you know to prevent prying eyes from hearing our conversation?”

His eyes widen as his hands begin to flicker in movements. It’s too late for that though.

“Look, Mythren, I like you, of all the admins, you’re the best I know. Trust me when I say that I take no pleasure in it being you that I must use.” I lean down and touch the endless flow of whispering darkness, “But at the end of the day, I just need you to carry the torch…”

A pulse of authority ripples through the realm rapidly and I see spindles of light moving towards Mythren’s body as the symbol of a torch burns into the back of his neck.

“What are you doing to me…” he asks as lights begin to bloom in the periphery of his core’s realm.

“Just borrowing your power for the crescendo.”

“What… but you… that’s not possible…”

Light bends and reality folds as I am drawn back to my body.