"I have a lot of questions," said Blackthorne. It was quite the understatement, really. His life to date was nothing but broken promises, obscene occurrences, and unanswered questions.

"I do not doubt it." The specter of death offered a not-so-grim smile. "I'll answer what I am allowed to answer."

Blackthorne nodded to the oddly helpful avatar of death itself. "Why did you claim that I was family, after a fashion?"

Death acquired a thoughtful expression. "I'm not sure exactly how to answer that without causing more questions to be asked that I cannot answer."

"Tell me what you can..." said Blackthorne.

The somewhat dread specter nodded gently then lightly tapped his lower lip with the back of his staff. "If I were to tell you that there are innumerable realities in existence, and that there is a version of most mortals in nearly all of them, would you understand my meaning?"

"Some sort of multiverse theory? Infinite possibilities and variations on the nature of my existence? Yeah, I've seen a movie now and then," replied Blackthorne acerbically. He tried to keep the slight disdain from his voice, but it carried through anyway.

If Death was offended by his response, he did not show it. "Well, you seem to get around in several of them."

"Scott, you should know that when my twin sister got involved with you... rather one of your innumerable alternate variations, I looked into your known spiritual profile across a multitude of realities." Death chuckled softly to himself then shook his head. "You get into some strange and interesting situations... but that is as much as I can say on the matter."

"Wait... so we're family because your sister is dating one of the other versions of me?" Blackthorne stared openly at the incarnation of death. That had to be the most ridiculous thing that he had heard in at least a week.

Death snickered and tried to fight back a laugh. He made air quotes with his free hand then said, "Dating. Heh."

Blackthorne tilted his head to the side. "Should I even ask?"

"Please don't. I try not to think about it despite the fact that my family just won't shut up about the details." Death rolled his eyes then sighed. "I shared a womb with that silly girl. I don't need to know all the details of her love life, especially not in glorious high-definition and panoramic surround sound."

"I... uh..." Blackthorne was truly at a loss for words. How did one respond to the literal incarnation of death having to deal with a sister who won't shut up about a guy she likes?

"Anyway, you're something of a special entity to my family. So, you're sort of family adjacent," said Death.

Blackthorne looked to the side then muttered, "Didn't do much for my sister..."

An icy blast of freezing cold air skirled across his scales. Chilled to the bone, he looked back over to Death. The darkly clad deity practically radiated killing intent in that moment.

"What happened to you and your family is heinous beyond words. It is bad enough when mortals do that to each other, but for one of my kind to take your grief and exacerbate it for their own purposes is unforgiveable," said Death.

Blackthorne said nothing. Whether this weird guy who claimed to be a god was actually Death or not, he did seem to be sincere in his dislike of the situation. It would be foolish to alienate someone who might be able to help him.

Death continued to radiate his aura for a time, but then slowly tilted his dead to the side. "You are not trembling in existential terror... interesting."

"I'm trembling a little due to the cold? Does that make you feel better about yourself?" asked Blackthorne without a hint of concern for his own mortality, or the current lack thereof.

The freezing cold aura died away even as the deity began to chuckle. "Logos Remnant knew what it was doing... There's no way that race of yours was a simple glitch in the system."

"Logos Remnant?" pressed Blackthorne.

Death began to speak, but found that he could not. He changed what he intended to say, and found that he could speak once more. "Ah. Seems we have reached a topic that I am not authorized to discuss with you. It will have to be a discussion for another day."

"Really? That's convenient..." mumbled the dragon.

"Not really. It's not like you'll remember most of our conversation anyway. Death, and hopefully a rebirth, does have a profound effect on the mortal psyche, after all," said the deity.

"If I'm not going to remember any of this why did you bother to tell me any of it?" asked Blackthorne.

Death looked him squarely in the eyes then spoke in a sincere and somber tone. "You deserve answers and the half-baked idiots who run the shit show you now call your life don't seem to give a damn about the mortals living in the world despite their massive fuck up."

"Fuck up? Why are you talking like you aren't one of them?" asked Blackthorne with a snort.

This time it was Death's turn to snort. "Don't lump me in with these idiots. I've crafted entire worlds on my own from scratch and not once screwed things up this badly."

Death became chatty in that moment. "I've been actively working as the embodiment of the transition from one life to the next for far longer than most of the nations on your planet have existed. Heck I was born shortly before that Jesus fellow you people like to talk about on so many of your worlds."

Blackthorne pressed for details. "So... what? If you're so good at this world making business, why act like you are different than the others?"

"I was requested specifically to come get involved in this program because of how badly they ruined things. So many things have been done wrong, criminally so in many regards," said Death.

"What do you mean?" asked Blackthorne. "Isn't this how you people do things? You change whatever world you want willy-nilly and we all get to suffer along at your whims."

"Not at all. In point of fact, none of what is happening to your world and people should have happened," said Death. "Those blithering idiots were supposed to make an instance copy of the current world, empty of sentient life. That copy of this world would then have been altered into the world they wished and populated by souls that chose to be there."

"What...?" asked Blackthorne intelligently. "I certainly don't recall giving permission for my life to get turned upside down."

"None of you did. Someone on the team, we still don't know who, updated the master file directly instead of making a world instance. So all of the changes to the instance were applied directly to this world," said Death.

"So... Everything that's happened? The people who died and the ability to travel to the dream world? None of it were supposed to happen at all?" asked Blackthorne with a snort. He was not certain that he bought the excuse. Poor little gods, someone screwed up. Oh well. Let's make a video game out of the left over planet. The entire concept was unadulterated bullshit in his opinion.

Death nodded to him. "These half-wits have been writing and rewriting reality here for approximately twenty years now in the hope of lessening the inevitable devastation."

"Devastation... Just how bad will it get?" asked Blackthorne.

"Bad," said Death. "Worse than you think, and twice as ugly. The worst part is that there isn't much that can be done about it other than to mitigate the worst of the coming situation by trying to beef up the mortal populace."

"Why haven't you told anyone? People should know how bad it will get!" exclaimed Blackthorne.

"You're preaching to the choir. I've been saying that since the moment I got involved, but my only interaction with the world is right here in this place due to the nature of my work," said Death. "I can tell people the truth here due to the fact that I insisted upon that right in my contract. The other administrative deities often try to butt in, but they can keep their nose out of my business. If I knew I could get away with it, I'd smite the lot of them."

"They should have to tell everyone, too," said Blackthorne. "This sort of thing needs to be explained in detail, and not just in a place where we'll forget about what we learned when we head back to Earth."

"You're right, but that idea gets voted down every time it comes up." Death shook his head slowly then sighed. "The administration is made up of a few factions. The largest group, however, is formed by a bunch of young deities who think it doesn't matter if mortals suffer because they die and reincarnate frequently anyway."

Death took a breath then continued, "Honestly? Most of them are just working on this project for the college credits. Many of them complain if meetings take more than an hour. Most of them skip work shifts and only come in long enough to maintain their status as active participants."

"That's..." Blackthorne blinked slowly then huffed loudly. He had no idea how to respond to that. His world was turbo fucked right in the ass, and the shoddy efforts expended toward trying to put it back together were nothing more than a school project that a bunch of lazy asshole wanted to use for easy college credits.

"I know." Death shook his head. "I've never seen such an unprofessional operation before. Not on this scale at least. Half the time, one group will make a change then not bother to tell anyone else. Bugs inevitably crop up, then some asshole will arbitrarily decide that the new bug should become a feature so they try to make it into one."

Suddenly, all of the weird errors and constant changes to the way the system worked made sense. They were not taking the world seriously, and did not care whether or not the people living in it suffered. They were just mortals, after all.