“Horseshit,” Sam said without thinking. Gods, he could feel himself slipping. Could hear the storm raging inside himself, could feel its razor kiss against the insides of his soul.

“Unfortunately not,” the creature said, its head disappearing again. “Surely you’ve noticed it as well, the way a fish brought from water will begin to notice it by its absence if nothing else. Curious rules put in place for arbitrary reasons. Strange happenings that defy logic. The shadow-copy of a lich given life. A dungeon core that flaunts all the rules you have come to understand.

“A being,” and here another mouth appeared, smirking, on a hand that grew and gestured to itself, “of untold power which should not exist according to the reality you know.”

Sam felt the anger rising up from the storm to take primacy of place.

“You’re telling me,” he said, and there was a growl in his voice, “that Marie decided to leave behind everything she loved because you told her that reality is a lie?”

“No. She chose to join me because I told her she could help replace that lie with truth.”

Shit. That did sound like Marie.

“Explain,” he said.

“It is simply called the System. Once, countless eons ago, it did not exist. It was forced upon this world by a monster, a creature of greed and selfish ambition. All who now live, with some notable exceptions, are under its sway and held by its rules. It governs your bodies, your lives, your very will. Or did you believe it natural that every single goblin in the world is a destruction-loving mad-person with curiously strong attachments to serrated edges?”

Sam felt his jaw drop. “No, that’s not—“

“Possible? That all orcs are born with a predilection for axes? That humans are able to learn whatever skill they choose and master it? That kobolds, every kobold in existence has a love and fondness for debate that borders on the fanatical?” A half-dozen smirking heads rose up from the morass just long enough to be noticed, then vanished again. “As a fish swims through water, not even noticing the existence of the liquid. Until it is removed.”

“Horseshit,” Sam rasped again, and this time it had feeling behind it. “I’ve known goblins. And kobolds. And orcs. They’re all different from each other.”

“Different, yes. Within the limitations imposed upon them by the System they are free to grow and diverge and thrive as they wist.”

The shaper of reality stilled again, and suddenly a million eyes opened up, staring unblinking at Sam. Every inch of the thing was covered in eyes, except for the very center, where a mouth formed and spoke quietly.

“Within the limitations.”

It all unfolded like a map in front of Sam’s mind’s eye. Oh gods, it made sense. Of a sort.

“Marie—“ He had to pause to adjust… everything. “What did you do to her?”

“I showed her the truths I have just shown to you. And more. I will not reveal everything to you because you are outside of my fold. Ally, perhaps, but only perhaps. It may yet be that we meet at loggerheads, and should that happen it would not do to have revealed all my intentions to my enemy.

“But it is enough to say that I revealed truth to her. And I gave her a Choice; return to the world she knew, none the wiser, or join my children and perhaps affect a change on this world such as has not been seen since the System descended.

“Freedom, Samuel Tolliver. Untrammeled freedom on a world hobbled by the dead whims of a deceased madman. That is my aim. That is the truth. That is what your Marie gave up her life for. And that is why she left you, and those she loved. For had she returned, you would have seen the difference. And you would have commented on it. And then the System would have seen, and the Five would have had to act.

“For you see, Samuel Tolliver, the others of the Five do not believe as I do, as my children do. They would have the whole world remain enslaved, subjugated, unable to alter its own destiny but instead railroaded along the course set for it by insane men long dead.

“No, those who choose rebirth as my children must, by necessity, leave all shreds of their old lives behind. To do anything else would court disaster and ruination for the entire world.”

Sam closed his eyes against the tears that began to burn there. “You’re telling me that Marie, my Marie, made a choice to give up everyone she loved, to leave us all behind and join with you…”

“That she might, one day, free you. Yes.”

“What the hell do you expect me to do with all this information?”

Three heads grew, and the smiles on each one of them showed off far too many teeth.

“Do? Samuel Tolliver, you are a True Being, freed from the shackles of the System and granted your own destiny by virtue of your actions.

“I expect you to do whatever you damn well please.”

* * *

Apollyon left the Admin Room not long after that. Sam asked a few more questions, small ones, about powers and timelines and things, and got mostly basic answers. The—and it was still strange to think about it like this—the Shaper of Reality had asked him to keep quiet about his plans, to not speak of them in areas where the System existed and could overhear. But he had also made it plain that he would not interfere if Sam chose to do so.

It was a neat little trap. Sam wondered if that was how he’d gotten Marie. Show ‘truth’ about reality, then claim nothing could be said about it to others or ‘The Five’ would come down on him like a headsman’s axe. And everyone else she’d ever loved.

Couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t act on it, couldn’t ignore it because if it was true it changed everything. So the options were go with Apollyon or… Nothing.

A very neat little trap.

The hurt and betrayal he’d felt not twenty minutes ago had drained away now, replaced by cold examination and icy calculation. He’d been prepared to be hurt by Marie, to have his heart flayed open by her choices. Hell, he’d gone to see her knowing, knowing that she’d chosen… Whatever the hell she was now, over her friends and family.

And him.

And now, suddenly, here was this new wrinkle. And what a wrinkle. God himself, or something near enough as to make no difference, had come down from on high and—perhaps without intending to do so but the result was the same—taken the blame off of Marie’s shoulders and laid it squarely across his own.

He sat in that chair, staring at the white walls of the room, thinking harder than he had ever thought in his life. Apollyon had given him a lot of information. Clearly with the intention of protecting Marie from any backlash—and wasn’t that going to be a fun conversation when he finally stepped out of here and back into his old reality.

Sam’s mind reeled with the new information. He felt like floodwaters had just crashed over his head, leaving him spinning and adrift in a black rushing sea. He could drown in what he had been given, even as he struck out for one quick breath of sanity. Apollyon’s words had changed everything…

But had he intended to give as much as he had?

It was the things the creature hadn’t said that swirled to the forefront of Sam’s mind, a tangible rope in the swirling morass. Something to grab hold of. He’d said nothing about why he was interested in ‘replacing lies with truth’. Nor about his methods in doing it. This Apollyon creature was trying very hard, it seemed to Sam, to present him with only a single viewpoint, a single lens through which he was supposed to view reality. And that… Was revealing.

It also occurred to Sam that Apollyon had very carefully not divulged what had happened to the others. David the leader, and Cynthia the cleric, and the rest of the party that had gone hunting the wandering dungeon. Ma and Pop had hunted for them, he knew. Had expended effort and coin to try and track down any mention of them. And there had been nothing.

His eyes narrowed as he followed that line of thought. Had they been offered the choice as well? Had they accepted? Or had Apollyon, seeking only Marie, disposed of her compatriots as a harvest-master might have disposed of under-ripe fruit caught in the same basket as the ripe?

He glanced upwards, a reflex he was beginning to recognized. He was in the same trap as Marie. He couldn’t talk about this with anyone. Not where ears might hear. Which, it seemed, meant anywhere that was connected to the system.

Right then.

He stood slowly, ordering his thoughts. Three points stood out to him, blazing against his inner eye.

First: he had a name to put to his enemies now. The Five, Apollyon had called them. Presumably that meant there were four others besides himself. No longer faceless, no longer unknown, no longer mysterious otherworldly entities that might haunt his dreams. The first step to conquering fear is to drag it out into the light and name it.

Second: Marie. She was back. She was different. Perhaps that was good, perhaps that was bad. It was impossible to tell, but at the very least he had a starting point on how to deal with her.

Third: Apollyon. And he had two sub-points all of his own. Point one, Sam believed everything Apollyon had told him. It had the ring of truth, and everything made a despicable kind of sense.

Point two, he didn’t trust that shady shifting son of a bitch one damn bit.

It was more instinct than anything else, spurred on by the few key omissions from the creature’s story. A few key omissions… And the memory of a madman in a circle built to hold a god.

Right then.

Friend or foe, ally or enemy, Apollyon had changed the game field today by pulling Sam out and giving him this information. Perhaps he thought he was gaining an ally. Or just protecting a key piece. Perhaps he was simply doing it out of the goodness of his heart and a desire to provide Sam with the most accurate information possible.

Sam let a cold smile spread across his features as he turned and started for the exit door.

Whether he knew it or not, Apollyon had given him a starting points. Several of them, in fact.

He could work with that.