“Who are you?”

Jonathan didn’t know if it was a good thing, but he was getting used to sudden changes in environments. A minute ago he was speaking to voice in his head and now he found himself standing next a pair of sofas opposite each other in an otherwise empty room if ‘room’ was the right word to call it. The ‘room’ was empty and had no walls that Jonathan could see but it had ceiling. It was bathed in an eerie blue light. On the sofa opposite the one he was standing next to, sat an old woman.

She looked like his grandmother.

She was dressed in what his grandmother was wearing the last time he saw her; a blue Vodacom shirt his grandmother got for free when Vodacom was promoting their service in her area some years ago, most of the markings on it faded from years of use. His grandmother loved free stuff. She was also wearing a white skirt his grandmother had since who knows when and grey sneakers his sister got her for her birthday. She motioned towards the sofa next to him.

“Sit, please.”

Jonathan was unsure of why exactly he sat down with no protest. Perhaps it was the resemblance to his grandmother, or that there was not much else to do in this ‘room’. What he was getting increasingly sure of was that-

“You’re not her.”

The old woman smiled.

“No I am not, Jonathan. To answer your question, I am a storyteller.”

“Um, ok. The mystery is cool I guess but that tells me nothing though. That just creates more questions if I’m being honest. Also why do you look like my Granma?”

The woman’s smile turned into a scowl followed by a long sigh. Her face softened before she spoke.

“Ah, I apologize. I often forget how confusing this situation is for those who aren’t me. Well, I chose to look like your grandmother because she is often able to calm you and I wished not to startle you. Before you ask, I know about your relationship with your grandmother because I have been watching you. Now, there is no need to feel either flattered or afraid. I watch all that is watchable.”

Jonathan had a hard time getting his head around what he had just heard, but he was soon getting accustomed to meeting entities he had no understanding of. A part of him still thought himself to have been on some weird hallucinogenic trip since he came on Arda and what he had just heard made that theory feel more likely.

“So you’re always there watching things? Are you omniscient? Like a god or something?”

“I would not call myself either of those descriptions. The term ‘omniscient’ implies the ability to know what will be said or done in the future. I only watch and record the present. I am also not a god. A god can create, I cannot. I merely watch and imitate or otherwise use what is already there. An example would be where we are sitting right now; this room is a part of your subconscious, which I am currently occupying. These sofas are not of my creation either, they are taken from the movie The Matrix and so is the design of this room. Even the form I am taking is the form of your grandmother. Instead I would call myself ever-present.”

No small amount of curiosity wanted Jonathan to ask about the mechanics of her existence and her origins, but he decided to ask another question, one he felt was more appropriate for the situation.

“So...why am I here? Why did you bring me here?”

The old woman. the storyteller, smiled a smile which felt manufactured to Jonathan. He decided not to mention it.

“Well, that explanation warrants me explaining a few things about myself first so I suggest you get comfortable.”

The woman paused, while Jonathan awkwardly shifted around in on his sofa to get more comfortable all the while musing about how he was ironic it was that he had to try to be more comfortable in his own mind. Although, he supposed, most people weren’t comfortable in theirs either.

After spending a few seconds shifting around, he gave her a thumbs up.

“Then I shall begin. As I have said earlier, I am a storyteller. The first one in fact, although it is possible that others have existed before me, I have not met them. What this means is that I am a being that has existed since the start of the Multiverse. Although, it would be more accurate to say I that I have existed since the first event to occur in the Multiverse happened. Are you with me so far?”

Jonathan was not sure if he understood. An storm of questions popped into his head; A multiverse? How old was this woman? Was she lying? He felt sure that she was but he nodded.

“Very well. From my creation, I have watched and recorded the events that have taken place. From stars being born in cosmic maelstroms to the birth of the first man, I have seen it all, watching and waiting. Waiting for the first listeners. You see, I have been alive for a long time. Too long for most to bear alone only doing what amounted to nothing. So when the first beings to become self-aware appeared, so did I, in front of them. When I did, they bowed to me. I told them about me, the things that I have witnessed. They made monuments to me. I appeared to others, worlds away and others, worlds away from them. They all reacted the same way. They revered me. A mere storyteller.”

She sighed and paused for long disgusting beat before she brushed her hand through her hair and continued.

“Anyway, millennia pass and the inhabitants of these worlds meet each other. As I had met them in a form each race was comfortable in, they all disagreed on my form and they fought, many ‘holy’ wars ensued. In an effort to stop what I had caused, I appeared to them in a different form, a one they could all see was different so they all agree on the pointlessness of their war. They thought of me as an imposter, their god was obviously bigger, more menacing, he could cause floods or feed the hungry. Things I am unable to do. Billions died because of me.”

Jonathan felt a mix of apprehension and sadness, part of him disbelieved her and another felt…bad for her. Jonathan couldn’t fathom how many lives that would be, in practice. He remembered the bodies of the slaves thrown into the sewers he escaped from and how he barely registered them on his radar. It was survive now, think later and now he felt an almost inescapable sense of guilt. They were people just like him, taken from their homes, just like him and they died, just like he would have. He hadn’t thought about them since then, was he a bad guy for denying the existence of something he didn’t fathom because he couldn’t fathom them? He didn’t know. The woman continued.

“Point is, I made a mistake, a mistake that killed many, many people, because I was bored. Maybe there was a reason that had to happen, maybe not. What all that exposition is leading to is that decisions matter. They always have, they always will. Do you understand?”

“Um, ok.” Jonathan knew that all this talk was going somewhere; he just couldn’t tell where it was going.

“Alright. Good. As long as you understand that, the rest shouldn’t be so hard. After my mistake, I decided not to interfere with affairs that are not mine. However, infinity is a long time for non-interference. So I interfered in other ways. I appear in dreams to give scholars, writers and other creatives inspiration. Y’know, a little push in the right direction, I wanted to make up for what I had done y’know? So I did, for millennia, across an uncountable amount of worlds in an uncountable amount of cultures. For a while, I felt pretty good, I was pretty proud of myself. As you can tell, this as it always has, turned out to be a mistake when I discovered new universes, far more than I knew to exist. Do you understand?”

“Not really if I’m being honest. I asked why you brought me here and you’re here talking about things that are way outside the scope of my imagination. About galaxies and billions of people. Anyway I slice it, it doesn’t really look like it has a lot to do with me. Plus for all I know, you could be lying or I could be hallucinating. No offense.”

“I had hoped that you would understand without having to directly tell you what I’m trying to say. People don’t usually react well. Okay, so the universes I discovered were similar to the writings of the various authors I inspired. I found at least two universes where a goblin led armies in an effort to take over the world. One where a slime became a dragon, two where necromancers saved the world, another where three governments took totalitarian control over earth and one where I…found you.”

“What. T-t-that makes no sense.”

“Look, I’m not necessarily saying there is a causal relationship between what was written by all these authors and what I have seen. It’s entirely possible those in an infinite number of universes, an infinite number of possibilities exist and that all them could have simply escaped my notice until recently. The problem is that all these universes are shallow, usually with a single planet or so simply sitting in an otherwise empty universe. Some even fragrantly ignore the laws of physics. An example would be this planet. The sun is not a star on this planet, but rather the burning body of a dead god. The planet doesn’t even revolve around it either, it revolves around the planet.”

If Jonathan wasn’t sitting down, he was sure he would have collapsed. He felt as if the room was spinning around him. He felt sick; he got a headache that ran from his forehead into the back of his eyes accompanied by a sudden weakness in his legs.

“A-are you saying what I thing you’re sayi-“

“I’m almost 100% sure that you’re fictional and that I had a hand in creating you. I’m…sorry.”

Jonathan hung his head. He hoped that he was dreaming, that he was going mad in some mental hospital or that he got his drink spiked and that he was on some drug induced trip. Most of all, he wished she was lying. She must be, there was no way this was true. He wanted to stand up and punch her but…she still looked like his grandmother. No matter how he felt, he couldn’t hit her. He could never hit her. Not when she looked like this. His chest felt heavy, he was having a hard time breathing as he felt his cheeks flare up. He put his hands to his cheeks, they were wet. He was crying.

He cried for what felt like days. He cried until his sobs held no meaning, until he was tired. All the while the old woman sat in front of him, with a simple frown on her face. She waited until his sobs quieted down. When he was done crying she stood up and put her hand on Jonathans back. She spoke;

“As I said, I’m sorry. No one should suffer like your people do and yet many do. For my mistake, I will assist you by helping you survive. I cannot directly interfere but I can tell you why all these beings are after you. Are you ready?”

What he had just heard made Jonathan feel a deep distrust of towards this woman. It wasn’t as if her story didn’t have any holes. Wouldn’t helping him count as interference? This could be some sort of elaborate scheme. Help him survive? Yeah, right. No one he met since he got on Arda would be kind enough to help him without taking something in return. Even if her story was true, everybody had an agenda, this woman was no different. After hesitating, he nodded.

“Good…The author of this story was feeling frustrated with Isekai’s he read and watched. He wrote this in an effort to subvert genre tropes to give it what he felt was realism. In order to keep up with what he felt was realistic; he made it so the summoners’ had an agenda. No power up would be free. Now, in order to achieve this he made a mistake, a mistake I helped him create. He made it so the gods of this planet had a vested interest in the actions of the people of this planet. They need the adulations of the people to survive. This wouldn’t be the first time this happened in a fiction so ordinarily there should be no problem.”

She sat back down.

“However in this case it became a problem. The gods of this planet are incredibly greedy. So much so that they have manipulated events on this planet for millennia. You see, they manipulate conditions so that they receive praise for causing prosperity, after which they create conflict by manufacturing an enemy for the people of Arda. They conflict is always enough to upset the balance of the world after which the people of this planet ‘miraculously win by virtue of divine intervention’. The people praise them and the cycle repeats.”

Jonathan wiped off the tears still on his cheeks.

“But what does that have to do with me? Do you mean they’re the reason I was brought here?”

“Yes and no, these threats they manufacture change from generation to generation. First it was dragons, then demons, then wild beasts and so on and so on. Now, it’s a slave revolt led by the [Chosen]. Only the [Chosen] were well, chosen. You were a case of bad luck, for both sides.”

“Because of the [Usurper] quest?”

“Exactly. That quest was made by a god in allegiance with the gods of this planet to give the [Chosen] strength, to make them a viable threat. After they lead an uprising, they ‘miraculousy’ die. The problem was, they assumed that the god in question cared about their lives. Spoiler alert, he didn’t. At the first opportunity he gave it to the first person to meet his fancy. Problem is, gods do not have overlapping domains and killing you would have caused the quest to go to the god who did it.”

Jonathan was incredulous.

“That’s a bad thing?”

“Yes, the god who gave you that quest isn’t from Arda, he’s from Earth. When the people from your Earth were brought here, they brought with them their gods. These gods ended up clashing with the ones here naturally, the resulting war killed off many gods, almost all of them from Earth. The last surviving one was a deity of war and death. In particular, he kills other gods.”

“This guy is the one who gave me the quest? They asked him for help?”

It didn’t make sense.

“Yes, they trusted that he was a god and saw potential in him, if they were able to make an ally of him. They thought that he could be their personal enforcer, killing gods that did not agree with their plans.”

Jonathan huffed in response.

“All I heard was that they were arrogant. I guess that helps me understand why they’ve been after me, shit.”

Jonathan paused and asked a question that burned inside him since he first arrived on Arda.

“So…how do I get home?”

The old woman stood up and brought her hand to his shoulder.

“I’m sorry…you can’t.”