Chapter Twenty Nine.

I was frozen in place. The sibilant voice had shocked me into a silent stupor and my mind was racing to catch up.

What does it mean ‘another? Is it talking about me being awakened? And wasn’t this thing supposed to be dead for the last few thousand years!?

The ground convulsed, shifting rhythmically as a chuckle like glaciers crashing rocked my senses. Then the voice returned, bizarrely quiet as before.

“Time? Death? Mortal foibles, newborn, they mean little to us. The Achorai saw what I wished them to see.”

Us? I could feel it in the voice’s inflection, he was talking about— “You’re like me.” The words escaped my lips before I could really think about them, and I realized my mistake when the voice returned sounding less… benign.

“Like… you?”

A burst of anxiety crept up on me as the very air trembled with those words. The voice hissed louder, pushing me down with its sheer force.

“You think I… am like you?”

The darkness in front of me split open, revealing a starry landscape like the universe zoomed out.

“I have watched galaxies be born—”

In front of me, new stars formed. It only took moments for them to group in a long spiral, reminiscent of my own milky way.

“—and die.”

One by one, the stars winked out. Drifting apart as fewer and fewer remained.

“I have wandered the endless dark between the stars for eons beyond your reckoning.”

And we did. I could feel us moving through the vastness of space. Feel time passing on an unimaginable scale.

“I have witnessed the birth of worlds, seen this universe and a thousand more come to be in all their splendour—”

We stood in what I knew was the center of a new universe. Cosmic nebulae surrounded us, stars danced across the sky in innumerable patterns. Then with a single shifting movement…

“—and was unmoved.”

It was all gone.

I had to stop myself from crying out. That hadn’t been an illusion. Here, from outside the constraints of time, an entire universe had been created and summarily destroyed to prove a point. And the point was don’t piss off the all-powerful eldritch serpent while you’re standing on it you moron!

“I, am not like you.”

“Point taken.” I answered meekly. A rustle from the ground was my only reply for a moment, and when the voice returned it was once again at a whisper.

“Early you come to this place, newborn. There is much you have yet to learn, and much you cannot yet by your nature.”

Winds buffeted me as the voice breathed in once again. I could almost sense something moving in the blackness around me, an enormous shape like the moon tracking across the sky. The voice came from it, sliding eerily into my mind.

“You wonder now… if our difference be so great, why do we speak? What has the little spark to offer the sun?”

The looming shape pulled closer, filling the dark sky above me like two worlds about to collide, still indistinct despite overwhelming every sense I had with its presence.

“A courtesy, a warning… and a gift, newborn. We are eternal, all who have broken from the dream. You do not understand what this means— not yet. And so the first of us began this, a cycle of courtesy, so often futile, to warn those who follow from their path. You cannot perceive the suffering bound to the road you now walk.”

A shudder wracked the Leviathan’s body, sending me tumbling like an earthquake.

“Our instincts betray us, in the beginning. Demanding we fight, struggle, live. Screaming that we grow stronger and perpetuate ourselves. Too late we recognize eternity’s lie. Too late do we see the truth, for though we persist beyond death… it takes its toll all the same. Pieces left behind, a creeping darkness of memory that cannot be escaped. Descent… until you heed the call of the infinite, in vain hope that you may end, to wander in emptiness eternal. Embrace your death, and never return to this dark place between worlds.”

Suddenly I was alone again, the Void crushing in around me. A spike of primal fear shot through me at the thought of being trapped alone in this for eternity. The Leviathan reappeared beneath my feet in a blink just as I felt myself start to panic. The susurrus of billions of scales sliding along each other was deafening and I wondered how I could have missed their presence. I could feel the immense being’s attention, waiting on me to respond, but I was floundering under the weight of even that simple expectation.

“I— I understand, but my friends, my fam—” I stuttered out before it interrupted me.

“You do not. Are their lives worth your condemnation, your infinite sorrow? You will die and return, they will not. How many lifetimes will you remember their names, their faces? When the stars of this world are long dust, will their memory still thank you for your sacrifice? Will that gratitude sustain you? Let them die. The dream shall embrace them as it has before.”

Despite the pressure I was under, the creeping dread still clawing at me from the darkness, my mind rebelled at the thought of abandoning my life on Haven— limited as it was. I didn’t know if my former minions were still alive or not, but something in me snarled with defiance at the thought of leaving them to their fate, accepting the loss and moving on quietly. My Ideal sung in the back of my mind in agreement; thrumming in my soul with a familiar refrain— [Law] does not bow. The Leviathan seemed to understand my determination and sighed titanically before drawing back.

“So be it, newborn. A courtesy granted… now the warning. And fitting, for your determination, but to understand it you will need… context.”

Darkness encroached on me again, but on a deeper level this time. I had time for a split second of alarm before my consciousness faded.

Fate is not a rigid thing. The future branches and twists in a myriad of ways, innumerable connections forming and fading before solidifying into the present. Many allegories exist to describe this network of possibilities; A great tree, a river, a road… or a web. As the greatest of the Weavers, she prefers the last of these.

Her calling is a crafting beyond the imagination of the mortals who pray to her for guidance. It is her life’s work, vast beyond measure, connecting the nigh-infinte pathways of her world into a cohesive whole. The Web of Fate.

Beautiful, grand, immeasurable… and flawed.

For through it she sees the threads begin to vanish, her own demise inescapable as the Achorai— in their madness— would rather seek to end all of Fate than accept their own. Again and again, she is forced to compromise and graft new branches onto her work. Forced to beg the others for their aid, to summon champions from beyond. The alterations stand out hideously to her, imperfections on the face of her ultimate legacy filling her with revulsion. She hates it, but there is no way out.

Until there is.

A breach comes, at first filling her heart with terror as she imagines it has found a way through their combined protections, but she calms quickly as she determines the source. A soul, lost and weakened but alive and more importantly, she can feel the Void tainting it. Mixing in equal parts with a mortal and the mutilated corpse of a celestial emissary.

How??

Such a thing cannot exist within the confines of reality as she knows it. But there it is anyway, casually upturning everything she understands about the Void. And it is in that new understanding that she senses her opportunity.

She gazes upon her life’s creation, the sum of thousands of years of labor, and in an instant it is gone. Destroyed by her own hand, with all its flaws disappearing from her mind in a cathartic wave of relief. Now she must hurry, for she senses the world beginning to act on the new soul already.

Broken as it is, she can still sense the humanity in it. Calling out to its own kind, the soul would take their shape— altered yes, but still human. The desire for that kinship drawing it implacably towards the surface.

None of that, now.

Her mind races faster than even most of her own kind as she interrupts the System, her many limbs spooling out new strands of fate in a blinding stream as she weaves her tapestry anew. Already her new vision begins to take shape and she cannot help a smug smile.

I think I’ll take… that one instead.

An infuriated roar resounds as she pilfers from the last of the old Rot-lords, interrupting its own long-laid plans with an impish smile at her multitasking. An instant is all it takes and the switch is done, the intruding soul none the wiser and a multiplicity of birds aligned for her to kill with a single stone. She releases, and then she watches.

What follows is the most ambitious undertaking she has begun in centuries. A thousand tiny nudges every second— each one just barely within the rules limiting her interaction with the physical world. All to set up a course for her freedom.

The sound of struggle carries just a hair farther than it should, drawing a predator.

An old man, hiding from the world in his grief, encounters a stray experiment and decides to do a quick check of his garden.

A call is sent out among her devoted for the first time in millenia and she expends influence she has hoarded without care for cost. The others begin to notice their sister’s uncharacteristic frenzy but she ignores their inquiries— they cannot see as she does. Test after test she conducts to observe how her charge will react even as her mortal agents draw in the net around it. How carefully they must proceed to herd it ever deeper, and she feels like a huntress drawing back an arrow from a bow, her every action serving to narrow her aim.

For if she misses, she will die.

The moment arrives, Anathema burning away the strands of her manipulation as even she does not dare to interact with it. Alarm spreads among her increasingly insistent peers when they sense the living spark of apocalypse burning at the heart of their world. But even as she releases her control— she smiles. For she has aimed well.

And as her agent sacrifices himself to seal the breach and correct the failures of the Achorai, she turns herself to the daunting prospect of rebuilding her life’s work. It is the task of millenia once again, but now? She has all the time in the world.

I started awake suddenly, the ‘vision’ breaking off with the sight of a smug spidery-goddess resuming her work. An all-too-familiar pit opened in my stomach at the prospect of yet another powerful entity that felt it was ok to screw with my life. At least it explained what the hell happened to me since I arrived here, though I couldn’t help clenching my fists and struggling to keep a lid on my rising temper.

“A warning, newborn. They fear us, rightfully.”

The words came alongside an ocean of black fire, somehow perceivable even in the emptiness of the Void, erupting from beneath every scale on the Leviathan. Anathema, in quantities that would have swallowed all of Haven whole.

“[End] given form. If you would return to their worlds, remember this; even gods cannot abide the bane of all things. They will seek to control it, and if they cannot? They will seek to rid themselves of its baleful presence— as the spider did to you. Those at the supposed pinnacle seldom enjoy being reminded of their true frailty. Beware its cost, or find yourself hollowed out from within.”

I was already aware from talking to Murgui about the dangers of relying on Anathema, though admittedly it hadn’t stopped me from using it as a crutch in the meantime. The cost might be ephemeral now, but it felt like one of those things that I would deeply regret looking back on it. At the same time, I felt the dim stirrings of a plan forming to protect myself from further divine meddling.

“Lastly… a gift.”

The air around me compressed inwards, freezing me in place and lifting me immutably towards the dim radiance of the Leviathan’s head. Panic sparked in me but I had been completely suppressed in an instant.

“You may consider it a lesson as well.”

A brightening glow surrounded me, whiting out my senses completely in seconds.

“I shall return you to your dream by the quickest way.”

The blinding radiance suddenly became overwhelming pain, and I felt the eldritch essence I’d absorbed being ripped out— rejoining its true owner. A sense of amusement washed out to me from the Leviathan.

“Farewell, newborn. When next you dream, perhaps have more care…”

I had an instant to regret, denial of my ultimate failure warring with fear as I felt the end approaching.

The light vanished, and I died.

Again.

A familiar scene appeared before me. In shock I looked out at the twirling eddies of souls, the beautiful streams and currents marking the passage of innumerable lives. The view that once impressed me so much was the farthest thing from my current thoughts, however.

“That… dirty mother—”

I swore violently for several minutes. My soul quaked in place with rage, making the other souls nearby keep a subconscious distance from me. Before long I was screaming out into the space around me as the accumulated tension and trauma demanded release.

All that effort… and I still died. I failed.

Gradually I got myself under control again, but the outburst left me feeling wrung-out and hollow. The River flowed around me peacefully, untold billions of sparkling lights passing me in ignorance. I felt the current tugging at me; the same quiet plea to lay down my burdens and just… rest. A welcome home that called to my spirit, but it was weaker than the last time I died. The weakened call was a grim reminder of the Leviathan’s ‘courtesy’— if I chose to keep living, then eventually this door would be shut to me forever. Thinking of my [Blightlings], Veris and Murgui though… the amazing— if often terrifying— fantasy world I’d found myself in? It really wasn’t much of a choice at all. Maybe the Leviathan was right and I was condemning myself to some wretched eternity, but I wasn’t going to abandon my family for a minute longer than I had to.

So I ignored the siren call of peace, and got myself ready to claw my way back to Haven by any means necessary.

Alright. I got out of this place once, I can do it again. What do I have?

The eldritch essence was gone, but— thankfully— my freshly-repaired (and damaged again) soul hadn’t been crushed in the process. I honestly didn’t know if the Leviathan had anything to do with that or just the act of dying ‘patched’ me up, but I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable towards my actual murderer at this point. The crowd of souls nearby made testing if I still had Anathema a dangerous prospect akin to testing out a flamethrower in a crowded shopping mall, so that was out. Some things still worked though, and a flex of will had my [Cosmic Awakened Soul] reshape into my now-familiar crystal body.

Better. Now…

Floating in place, I stretched out my senses to their maximum. It only took me a few minutes of searching to spot what I was looking for; a fishhook of dark metal, drifting casually through the clouds of souls. A dark chuckle escaped from me as I pulled myself towards the hook and grabbed it in the middle. A couple short tugs on the line and I felt myself being reeled in.

I burst out of the river once again, and the hideous features of one of the ‘fishers’ greeted me like the mutant offspring of a tick and a squid— just like before. Things went a little differently this time, though.

"Oy, what the hell are—"

[Law] snapped into place around me and flattened the disgusting monster to the surface of the small floating island it stood on. I landed on top of it with a revolting *squish* and couldn’t help a nasty grin.

“Congratulations buddy, you caught a big one!”

It let out a muffled squeal of panic and squirmed violently beneath me before I silenced it with a kick.

“Listen up you overgrown parasite, it's your lucky day! I’ve got places to be and people who need me there, so you help me get to where I need to go and I won’t pop you like the living zit you are, sound good?”

The creature nodded frantically and muffled cries from it reached me from beneath its quivering mass. I shrugged and eased up on the creature with my domain until it could unsteadily lift its head. The proboscis-like mouth twitched and oozed as it worked to form words.

“W-where d’ya need t-to go?” It stammered out.

“Hmm… Good question.” I said. “Does the name ‘Haven’ ring any bells to you?” A confused look was the only reply until it seemed to pick up on my rising irritation.

“No! Uh, no sir. But the Overseer, all the shipments go through ‘im. He’s the only one that could gate ya through anyway.” The creature’s voice grated on my already raw nerves as it tried to sound ‘cooperative’, which still came across like a tin can full of sludge and nails.

“Great. Where??” I grit out to the dense abomination. It quailed and raised a trembling, crab-like arm to point. A pulse of [Law] had us both blasting off in the direction it had pointed. Other than pointing out minor course corrections the creature stayed mercifully silent and let me stew on my increasingly foul mood.

I don’t have time for this! I need to get back now.

We quickly approached a much larger formation of floating rock, studded with iridescent crystals like a reversed geode. An almost ridiculously bloated Fisher was perched in a clearing on top of the formation, focused on sorting a number of tar-like bags filled with more souls. Its many eyes jerked up to me with a start as we rocketed closer. It raised several of its hands to point at me and shout.

“What is the meaning of thi— URK!” The creature’s pompous speech was interrupted by the body of my former guide hitting him full in the face, knocking them both tumbling into the air with a screech. I shot forwards and grabbed onto the corpulent neck of ‘guide #2’, bringing the spinning monster to a jarring halt.

“Haven. Portal. Now.” I bit off in its face.

This one wasn’t as fearful of me as the last and hissed in my face.

“I know what you are, Awakened. You think you can face the whole of the Fisher’s Guild? Ha! You are no Titan of the Void yet.”

The crystal of my face split into a jagged maw, and I let just the tiniest spark of Anathema flare behind my teeth before I hissed right back.

“Yet.”

That shut it right up. Lucky too because without the eldritch essence to act as a buffer I could feel even that tiny spark of Anathema gnawing hungrily away at me. The Overseer snarled and it reached out several claws and gripped the empty air beside it. The air tore open with a howl of rushing wind to reveal a turbulent kaleidoscope of riotous color. I glared at the opened portal suspiciously after the creature’s easy acquiescence before turning back to it with a smile.

“I sure hope you picked the right destination, because you’re going through first.” A chuckle escaped me as the portal snapped shut instantly, a flash of fear crossing over the bloated monster’s face. It hurriedly opened a new portal, and without another word I pushed us both through.

Haven was beautiful from above. I might not be exactly familiar with the way the planet looked physically, but I recognized it all the same. We floated serenely above it; the portal screaming loudly in the background as the Fisher struggled to hold it open for his escape. A final kick was the only goodbye I had for the loathsome parasite to send it tumbling back through the portal before it snapped shut.

It bothered me a little, now that I was back and cooling down from the experiences of the last few hours. I had just walked through the interdimensional equivalent of a slave market… and done nothing. The Overseer was right— I couldn’t take on the whole Fisher’s Guild yet. I didn’t even know the size of the organization, but I knew that they dealt with multiple universes and had ongoing deals with a number of gods. Maybe that was just an excuse to justify things to myself, but I could feel how close I was to recovering my [Blightlings] now.

Although I ran into a slight problem immediately.

Previously, I hadn’t been aware of Fate’s manipulations. That might no longer be the case, but that didn’t mean I was going to put up with it. I just had a feeling I’d have to be a little more… polite than I’d been with the Fishers. Mostly.

I’d seen the spider’s weakness— her obsession with her creation. So against everyone’s advice again I summoned a tiny flicker of Anathema with a snap of my fingers. Gazing out onto Haven’s surface, I spoke into the space around me.

“I’d like to talk to a manager, please.”

Could the goddess crush me? Probably. But her life’s work was flammable, and I was standing under it with a match. I figured that should buy me some personal space.

Hang on guys, I’m coming.