As it turned out, training quickly became my favourite activity. I was a bit surprised by that, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, but I didn’t let that hinder my enthusiasm. If I were to stop and worry every time I encountered a mental hurdle, I wouldn’t do anything else. Best to just push past it and focus on the here and now, at least for the time being.
Especially if the here and now included jumping impossible distances with a long spear in hand, carefully thrusting it directly through the imagined heart of a shadow clone dummy. Being able to move this quickly and gracefully without feeling any exhaustion felt like a cheat. And I fully embraced that, turning to more and more esoteric weapons, going through the various ways that Vuthe had learned to use them.
With a feint to the side, and a step forwards, I pushed the spear forward as far as I could, having judged the distances perfectly to hit the head of the shadow clone, without the tip of the weapon breaking through the back of it. I grinned at that, shamelessly enjoying the skills I was capable of despite not training for them a day in my life.
The last dummy now destroyed, I pulled out the weapon and stood up straight again, taking a deep breath, then casually throwing the weapon to the side as I let it out. Shadows appeared under the ornate spear made of silvery metal with gold inlays, and swallowed it whole, returning it to my collection.
I still had the urge to call it Vuthe’s collection, but I was making a mental effort not to. For all intents and purposes, it was mine now.
Nodding in satisfaction, I stretched myself, then let my scales reform into my casual ensemble. The battle dress was nice, and I did like the look of it, but for the general day to day it felt unfitting. Another good indicator that, while I had inhabited Vuthe’s body, I still retained my own sensibilities.
For a moment I just stood there, idly gazing around the plaza and the destroyed buildings, not quite sure what to do with myself. Even with magick I wasn’t able to actually repair the buildings in any permanent way. Shadow magick wasn’t exactly suited for construction work, and that was ignoring the fact that I had absolutely no clue how to actually build a house. Especially not one in the mediaeval style found here.
I would like to start properly rebuilding the town at some point, but that would have to wait until I left its confines and found a mason or carpenter or something. Something to note for the future, at the very least.
But that didn’t leave me with much to do within the city at the moment. At the same time I really didn’t feel like going back to the library again. That place was one of boredom and disappointment.
So, with nothing better to do, I began wandering. I had overflown the city a couple of times in the past few days, but I hadn’t ever actually taken the time to wander along its streets. Now that I did, I sort of regretted not doing so sooner. The city was basically completely flattened, but it still made for a scenic experience, somehow. And some of the buildings were even partially intact.
Most of those seemed to be residential houses, as much as you could separate residential housing from workshops and shops in a city such as this. After some mindless wandering, though, I found one building that looked to have been an inn of some sorts previously, still mostly intact.
Okay, when I say mostly I meant the outer walls. Even from a distance it was clear that the roof had come down and the inside squashed. But at least the entrance area was still in one piece, including a table with half of its chairs.
Idly I stepped inside, glancing around the ruined establishment. Something that had quickly become apparent was the absence of all personal items. Things like decorations, artwork, every day necessities, basically anything that wasn’t present purely out of function or commercial requirements.
I frowned at that. The absence invoked a strange feeling of detachment, although I wasn’t quite sure how to properly describe it. And it wasn’t entirely unexpected, as it had been one of the more important details in the primary ‘Fall of Thelvadore’ revision. The difference being that in that revision it had been due to Vuthe carefully collecting everything personal, as she had taken charge of the souls of the fallen. All of Thelvadore, a sort of undead ghostly army.
Was that the case here as well? Or was it simply an oddity that came to be by mixing up so many different versions of the same timeline?
I could potentially check, but that would mean drawing upon Vuthe’s divine authority, and that was definitively something I was actively keeping my distance from. Mostly because of the previously mentioned danger that some worshippers or deities somewhere might notice some activity.
But not entirely just because of that.
While I had been holed up in the library, I’ve had ample time to think. And after some deliberation, I had become a little worried about the implications of me attempting to usurp Vuthe’s divinity. Because that was usually linked to the soul of the being. It was why divinity required belief: To empower a normal soul to gain access to aspects of reality that wasn’t meant for just anyone to get a hold of.
In a way it was meant as a sort of democratic system, to vote on who people believed to be competent and trustworthy enough to gain access to things that could have disastrous consequences if mishandled.
And while I now inhabited Vuthe’s body, I didn’t have her soul. At least I was pretty sure I didn’t. If I did… Well, that was opening an entirely different can of worms that even I wasn’t sure of the implications of. As with anything to do with souls, said implications were very likely to be not good, although there was quite the range of possibilities between ‘not good’ and ‘reality breaking apocalypse bad’.
Which was part of the reason I didn’t particularly care to try.
On paper, me trying shouldn’t do anything. I was still convinced that I didn’t share her soul–if only for my own sanity–and in that case all that should happen would be the attempt fizzling entirely, as if trying to walk through a door that just isn’t there.
Well, even that analogy was rather wrong, since doors were typically part of a wall. It fizzling wouldn’t mean me running into said wall. It would be more like attempting to walk through a door standing in the middle of nowhere, only to find yourself walking through empty space instead. Which… Yeah, my analogies could use some work.
Regardless, despite me being rather certain, or perhaps hopefully, about the uniqueness of my own soul, I also couldn’t be entirely certain that that would be what happened if I tried. For all intents and purposes, my situation was very unique. In many different ways. Such as my ability to learn Vuthe’s skills and instincts by simple merit of needing to. That implied a connection to the being known as Vuthe on a level that went beyond just the sharing of a physical body. A connection on a more esoteric level. Which almost always meant the involvement of magick, or forces far, far greater beyond.
I sat down at the table, finding the furniture simple, but robust. And evidently well kept, despite the apocalypse it had to endure. Not the most comfortable seat I’ve ever had, but definitely far from the worst. And given that this inn looked to me like the sort of place that catered to the broad masses, it felt sufficient.
With an idle glance around the remnants of the half-destroyed building, I could almost envision groups of people coming together after a hard day’s work to get some food and drink, the laughter and conversation reverberating from the walls. The lack of any decor and personal items made it a bit harder to visualise, but it didn’t take much imagination to fill those in.
I sighed at the thought, a small part of me urging to ensure this building one day returned to that peaceful existence.
With a shake of my head, I dismissed the mental image, returning to my previous train of thought.
Whatever the exact nature of my strange connection to Vuthe was, I wouldn’t be surprised if it somehow messed with the divine authority she was holding. And the most likely outcome of that was that divinity rejecting my attempts, no matter how small, which could have disastrous consequences, not only for my own health, but also anyone and anything in the vicinity. And vicinity in this case could very well include the rest of the continent, given the forces at play. Perhaps even more than just that.
So it wasn’t exactly something to take lightly.
Of course, I could also just be entirely wrong, and everything worked completely differently, but I wasn’t just going to risk my own fate, and potentially the fate of millions, if not billions of others, on a coin toss that I had absolutely no idea on the outcomes of.
My musings slowly turned to different matters as I sat there at the table, gaze locked onto nothing, lost in idle thoughts.
As it so often happened when I found myself in a quiet moment with nothing to distract me, I eventually returned back to the same question that had plagued me ever since I had woken up in the throne room. That, of course, being why and how I had ended up here?
I knew, intellectually, that Abyss had given me an answer. An answer, to be clear, that made sense both for what I had been able to observe so far, and the nature of the being who gave it to me.
Abyss was, by design, a weird sort. The sort that was born out of the idea from another character, this one not my own but that of a friend. Grimacing at my utter inability to recall anything about said friend, I pushed it aside, focusing instead of what I could recall. The base idea of Incognito Mortalis, a sort of rogue/trickster/assassin of sorts, whose main characteristic–or perhaps power would be the correct term–was his ability to sort of just… ignore the rules of reality.
He could be anywhere, at any time, for any reason, without anyone so much as noticing him. The rest of his lore was a bit hazy sadly, but this was the important aspect that had eventually led me to develop Abyss into a similar direction over time.
Although in her case I took the idea of ‘a glitch in the system’ a bit more literally, which ended up with her being the First Voidborne. The void being a sort of metaphysical interpretation of all the mistakes I made during my time building all the various worlds existing within the framework of my overarching multiverse. And Abyss had sort of created it, by collecting said mistakes into one place.
Ever since I had solidified that base idea, and spent some time properly polishing all the lore to do with Abyss and the void, I had kind of deliberately kept her out of my stories for the most part. She was an invisible force influencing events from behind the curtains, but seldom showed her face. This has led her to become known by many names and titles over the aeons, such as The Bleeding Abyss, the First Voidborne, the Lady of Secrets, the Nightmare of Darkness, and a whole host of others I honestly couldn’t be bothered to recall. Each edgier than the last, although this time by design. She was, after all, the sort of myth known to almost any civilization in the multiverse, even if nobody had any clue about who she actually was. Something that would be continuously embellished as time went on.
And all of it also served to obfuscate who she was, as a person, behind all of it. Because yes, despite all her weirdness, all the reality changing influence she had, all her knowledge and magickal competence, she was just another person at the end of the day. One who valued the pursuit of knowledge, the unearthing of secrets, and proper entertainment.
But also one who, even if she’d never admit it to anyone, probably not even herself, cared deeply about the multiverse and all that resided within it. When I called her the invisible influence behind the curtains, I meant that quite literally. She is the one who knows the vastness of the multiverse and the factions that reside within better than probably anyone, myself included. She is the one who makes sure nothing goes catastrophically bad when some cult, god, or whatever else might decide to tinker with the foundations of reality. She is the one who takes risks the likes of which nobody else would dare even think of, all in service to prevent the universe that had given birth to her from going tits up at any given moment.
And that was what worried me. Because, as someone who knew her better than probably anyone else, I knew that her excuse for more entertainment is so often just a front to hide her true purpose of preparing for something. Which made her nonchalant comment about simply giving me a way to fix the mess I sought to fix more of a warning sign as if she’d actually told me it was my purpose to save the multiverse from some unimaginable threat coming from the Beyond.
So why was I here? And how, exactly?
Obviously Abyss had the means to transmigrate someone, that wasn’t in question. But I wasn’t just someone. I was someone from the Beyond. That was what the residents of this multiverse called all that lay without the multiverse itself–the Construct, as I called it. Something that to them was just a vagueness far beyond their understanding.
Of course, I couldn’t discount the possibility that I wasn’t me. That I was simply a construct, some form of artificial creation based on the original me from the Beyond. Soul magick was forbidden, yes, but Abyss was the one person who could, and would, ignore that divine decree without suffering any major repercussions. Perhaps not even minor ones.
Hells, the last time she went ahead to do something like that she hadn’t been punished at all. Instead the council of Draconic Elders had decided to banish Bahamut into the nothingness of the void. Simply because she had been assisting Abyss to prevent the destruction of the dragons. A species that Bahamut was explicitly responsible for. She was the Dragon of Origin, mother to all dragon kind. It was her job to see them safe.
I sighed, rubbing my face, then got back up from my seat. As cozy as this inn was, I needed to move, to pace, to think. So, I turned myself around and left the building, wandering aimlessly through the various streets and roads, a labyrinth of walkways so very different from the cities I could vaguely remember from my past life.
The answer to the how was something that bothered me deeply, precisely because of my earlier tangent on divine authority. Did I possess Vuthe’s soul, or did I have my own? For any other being the answer would be simple, straight forward, and without any question. But for me that wasn’t as easy.
In theory, the soul was just what held a consciousness. It acted as its container, conduit, and the glue used to attach it to the physical realm. But that was just the explanation I had given to it in a story, vastly oversimplifying insanely complex magickal phenomena for the sake of world building. Who knows how that was translated to work in an actually real, working, reality.
And with Abyss being involved, the few fundamental rules might not be as fundamental as I would assume. Because, as should probably be obvious by now, she is the one being she can break those rules. Fuck’s sake, I deliberately created her just to be able to do that. She is an error in the system, a glitch in the matrix, a being that, by its very definition, does not adhere to the rules of reality!
I could feel the beginnings of a headache set in. The more I tried to think about this, the more I felt like it was impossible to get an answer. Even if Abyss were willing to tell me the truth, and I could be certain that what she told me was the truth, it would just open up even more questions, regardless of if I shared Vuthe’s soul or not.
I suppose I just had to wait until I met someone who knew Vuthe’s aura well enough that they could spot any potential differences. I just had to make sure that that happened without anyone getting suspicious. And hope that said someone wouldn’t try to merc me the moment they realised something was wrong, if something was indeed wrong.
I passed a number of old, destroyed houses. There still wasn’t any sign of fire or explosions, but these buildings seemed to be in an even worse state than everything else. To the point that it was basically impossible to even guess at what purpose they might have served. Given that they were on the larger side, it was likely that they had to have been of some importance.
I frowned. This was one of the rare instances I regretted not putting in more thought about the more detailed layout. It would’ve given me some sort of idea at least.
Shaking my head, I returned to my idle musings.
The question of how I arrived here would have to wait, but that still left the why. And that was the big one.
For as bad as the implications about the state of my own soul was, the implications for the reason for my presence could potentially be far worse. Because it would mean that Abyss truly had reached the end of her ideas.
I was knowledgeable about this world, and the multiverse in broad strokes. I was the one that made it, after all. But I was not, by any means, the most knowledgeable, nor did I have the skills or experience to try and solve anything in my current state. Really, if anything she should’ve addressed whatever she was dealing with, with the Creator. That being the sort of blank slate self-insert character at the top of the food chain I had mentioned earlier.
He was meant to stand above any and all else–excluding Abyss, of course–and would be far more qualified to be of assistance.
I stopped mid step, a sudden thought crossing my mind. One I did not like whatsoever.
What if she did, and that’s why I’m here? What if whatever she tried to summon or contact him didn’t work–since he was deliberately just a blank slate that more or less existed in name only–and instead it threw me in here as I was the next closest thing? She said that this world, this universe, was almost the same as the one I created, but that there were differences.
What if one of those differences is the absence of the Creator? Perhaps even his inner circle?
Okay, okay, I had to take a step back.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath to suppress the rising panic slowly creeping up in me. Only when I felt a bit more steady on my footing did I turn my attention back onto that previous train of thought.
Even if that assumption is correct, something I was very unlikely to ever be able to confirm in any capacity, it didn’t change anything in my immediate future. Even if I took all of the worst case scenarios, threw them all together, and assumed that was the nature of the situation I was in, it would still take some time before anything catastrophic was likely to happen.
Abyss was an immortal, someone who thought on the time spans of millions, if not billions of years. Not decades. Or centuries. Or hells, even millennia. If I was here, and again, under the assumption my worst case scenarios are, in fact, true, then she would already have had aeons to properly prepare for whatever she is preparing for. Which means that even if those preparations are insufficient, and even if I assume that I was her last resort, then I would still have some time before things go catastrophically sideways. The complete lack of urgency in her voice when we met was a good sign of that.
And it also meant that whatever was going to happen, I wouldn’t have to tackle entirely on my lonesome.
An idle musing crossed my mind, and I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. What began as a small bit of amusement quickly turned into a fit of laughter, then full on belly laughter until I was laying on the ground, unable to move.
It took me several minutes to get myself back under control, at which point I was thoroughly exhausted, suffering small pings of pain in my sides. I wiped away the tears, still giggling to myself, before I finally set back up again.
“I really am an egomaniacal narcissist, aren’t I? I arrive in a new world and immediately assume the reason was because they want my help in preventing disaster on a multiversal scale. Talk about self-absored, fucking hells.”
Shaking my head, I got back to my feet. Sometimes I truly was the biggest of idiots to ever idiot.
Of course, there was a small part of me that wasn’t able to shake all the brainstorming I had done. That part that usually always assumed the worst and would prepare a fortress, if it could, just because the weather forecast predicted a mild rain. But I pushed that part of me out of my mind.
Not only would worrying about such things be completely redundant anyway, since there was nothing I would be able to do, or even prepare for, until I knew far more than the small bits I had only been able to infer from what amounted to basically nothing. I could also think of more pleasant ways to spend my time in what was, ostensibly, a magical world of wonder and adventures.
Nodding to myself, I turned towards the palace once again.
Whatever reason Abyss may have had to put me here, it could wait. If she wanted my help, she’d talk to me. If not… Well, then it wasn’t my problem. At least for the moment. And despite my earlier complaints about the library, I actually found myself looking forward to it again. Though, this time I wasn’t going to hyperfocus on trying to figure out who Thelvadore had been at war with. There was history to study and a world to learn about. That sounded quite a bit more interesting than just skimming everything.
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