The rest of the trip was a blur. They left a great deal of alarms and excitement behind the as they raced back out through the wreckage, leaving the wendigos LivingDeadGrrl had attracted to her as a distraction.

Threadbare had felt a little bad about that, but Chase had done divinations, and assured him that by the time the wendigos were cut loose, every civilian would be off the street, and the remaining guards would be able to handle them before they could reach any innocents.

But once they were within sight of the airship, and Anne Bunny's scowling face was within sight, Threadbare saw words that told him he was out of danger.

You are now a level 35 Golemist!

INT+5

WILL+5

You have learned the Creator's Legacy skill!

They were safe, at least for the moment. He wouldn't have leveled up if he were still in danger.

“Ye got what ye needed, then?” Anne said, as they ran up the gangplank.

“It went smoothly,” the Phantom said, melting into view from thin air, and Threadbare was relieved to see him. The man hadn't turned up during that desperate last battle... but then, that hadn't been the plan, anyway. His job had solely been to help Midian find and steal the mirror while everyone else distracted the Patrician, and he'd done it.

“Don't lie,” said Midian, as she followed him up the ramp. “It didn't go smoothly, but it went about as well as it could. Hello, Anne. Sorry for the earlier fuss.”

And Threadbare had the privilege of seeing Anne Bunny freeze, and fight desperately to keep fear out of her eyes. “Ah. Ye. Welcome... back?”

“Good to be aboard. I'll be no trouble this time.” Midian patted her shoulder. “Please take us directly east two thousand leagues, then head north about fifty leagues until you find an old battlefield that used to be a garden. If you see a dragon, run.”

“Er.”

“It's probably best to do what she says,” Threadbare recommended. “She handed off her madness to somebody else.”

“Ah. I was wonderin' why an Oracle would be a keepin' that there condition...” Anne said, heading for the helm.

“Oh, I needed to give it to someone who deserved it more,” Midian said, sweetly. “He'll figure out how to get rid of it. Eventually.”

The crew hauled up the gangplank, and Cotton Tale headed out into the night.

Threadbare gave everyone a rest to settle their nerves, and while he waited, he called up his status screen and read oer his new skill.

Then he read it over again, to make sure that he fully understood what he was looking at.

Then he went and had a lie down, to let the implications sink into his mind.

He'd known that such high level skills were powerful. But this... this was unexpected.

It wasn't until there came a knock on his door, that he realized that quite a lot of time had passed. He opened it, to find Cagna looking down at him.

“Hey,” the dog woman said, taking a long pull from her pipe. “Midian's ready to talk to us, now.”

“I should hope so,” Threadbare said. “I hope she's a bit more forthcoming, now that she's sane.”

Cagna raised an eyebrow. “That's a bit sharp for you.”

“I'm sorry. That is a bit mean,” he said, adjusting his top hat. “Please, lead the way.”

“No, I get it,” she said, turning, and heading down the stairs. “You're out of the loop, and your best sources to remedy that are unreliable narrators, at best. We're dealing with a sitatuation that hasn't been in our control since that battle with Belltollia. Someone else is calling the shots here, and the best we can do is follow along in a way that makes sense to us. Yeah?”

“Sort of,” Threadbare said. “I wish I could have asked the Patrician more questions. I'm very much having trouble wrapping my mind around what he did, and why he did it. How could any of that make sense? How could any of what he was trying to do lead to anything good?”

“He wouldn't be the first asshole who thought the ends justified the means. Just the latest,” Cagna puffed. “Anyway, he's no longer our problem. At least for now.”

She fell silent as they reached the hold. The others looked up to him, some with palpable relief, and others with quiet nods.

Then they turned their attention back to Midian. She was wearing full purple robes now, and leaning on a staff that had various multi-colored crystals flying around it in lazy orbits. She offered him her own smile, as he entered and took a seat next to Chase and Renny.

“I'm sorry to keep you all waiting,” Threadbare said. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes and no,” Midian said. “The world is ending, and we must stop it.”

“Ah. It's one of those situations,” Thomasi said, settling back. “Is there an end boss to kill?”

“There's something at the end, but we cannot kill it. And the problem itself is entropy... an engineered entropy, more or less.”

“Perhaps you'd better begin at the beginning, then,” said Thomasi. “But earlier than you might wish to. You're an AI as well, aren't you?”

“Ah. Yes. Yes I am,” said Midian, raising her eyes to the Ringmaster. “Is that a problem?”

“No, not at all. You're why I was in the game originally,” said Thomasi, taking off his hat. “I was part of a program to establish contact and outreach with people like you in a neutral and unthreatening situation.”

“People... like me...” Midian tilted her head. “Given how many hunters we've had coming to kill us for as long as I've existed, you'll have to forgive my skepticism.”

“Yes, and where's that gotten our species, on the whole? This is a new approach. You've already demonstrated that co-existance is possible, so perhaps the problem is worth approaching from a different angle.”

“Perhaps we should talk about this,” she said, giving him a considering look. “But not now. Your world isn't going anywhere. This one... well, it's not going anywhere good if things stay as they are.”

“About that,” Chase said, looking from Midian to Thomasi, “what IS going on? Please, we need straight answers for once. The cards say it's something bad, but they can't narrow it down.”

“Well... to sum things up without getting highly technical, long ago there were dragons. And the dragons made gods. But the dragons weren't happy with having something more powerful than them, so they found out how to chain them.”

“The chained dragon on the login screen,” Thomasi breathed.

“Precisely. The last remaining god. They figured out how to consume their other gods for power, but they found out that the power didn't last. And eventually, left to their own devices, they'd shrink and becomesmaller and weaker. But this last god, the one they spared, was a god of dreams. And dreams can touch other worlds.”

“Or dis one,” Zuula said. “Shouldn't be touchin' odder world dreams. Sometimes you don't come back from dat.”

“That's very good advice that the ancient dragons didn't take,” Midian said. “They needed to drain power on a godlike scale to ensure that they and their children kept getting bigger and stronger. So they harnassed their god of dreams, and put him out into the realm between, the place where all worlds are connected. They put him in the very fundamental places of the universe, suspended eternally before the towers of creation. Or so they thought.”

“Which god?” Chase asked. “Do we know his name?”

“Konol,” Midian said.

Chase's eyes went wide. “But he's dead! He created the world and died from his efforts!”

“Yes and no,” Midian said. “Whenever the dragons got low on power, they pushed him from his resting place on the doorstep of creation, used him to latch onto a nearby dreaming world, and connect it to ours. This remade the world time and time again, changing the very way it worked countless times. And afterward, they would push Konol back into a place where there is no difference between life and death. So technically you're right, it just was a process rather than a one-and-done myth.”

The group digested this.

“Fuck,” said Cagna. “Poor guy.”

Aunarox spoke, and Threadbare was surprised to find her there. He hadn't seen her board the ship with everyone else, back during their escape.

“He is not to blame, though his work steals us from our homes,” said the djinn. “When this new world came to ours, we thought it a great working from one of our hidden masters, a creation for us to play and amuse ourselves with. And for a time, it was.”

“The old ones, the daemons, the djinn, the players... all of us were just the most recent cycles. The power that the dragons feed on comes from dream and imagination, and the magicks of the worlds he links. For a while the people of that realm get to visit Generica, but eventually the trap closes, and the dragons feed off the power of those caught in the trap,” Midian said, spreading her hands.

“Hang on,” said Thomasi, brow furrowed. “Earth doesn't have any magic.”

“Neither do we,” said Aunarox. “It is true, our world is made of quiddity, which we can form into anything we imagine with sufficient will and skill, and most others do not, but it is not MAGICK, it is just the way things are.”

“What one person calls magic, another calls technology, and a third calls quiddity,” Midian said. “These are the forms of power in your home worlds. And these are things the dragons can devour. Dragons ARE power. Makes sense they'd be omnivores.”

“Then why do we have magic?” Renny asked. “Wouldn't the dragons eat it all?”

“No. What use is power if you can't flaunt it?” Midian asked, somewhat rhetorically. “What you see here, what this world has, is the remnants of uncounted others, a series of different paradigms bound together in a way that shifts every time Konol brings a new world into this one.”

“The words. The changeover,” Cagna said, slapping her knee. “God damn, that makes sense. Finally! Mystery solved, and oh shit, I just gained two Detective levels.”

“You're welcome,” said Midian, grinning. Then the grin faded. “Though this iteration of the way the world works wasn't supposed to go on so long. Because we... no, there's no way around it. We fucked things up.”

“How?” Threadbare asked.

“I'm partially to blame. See, I'm a Chronomancer. And my level thirty skill is called “Message from Tomorrow.” It has one use, and it lets you send a message back to yourself, ten years ago. You get one use of it, then it's inactive forever. But here's the thing... when I got the skill, it was already inactive.”

“So you already used it before you got it?” Thomasi raised an eyebrow.

“I did. And checking my logs, I did in fact receive a suspicious email precisely ten years before. It was short, like Messge from Tomorrow warned me it would be. It said, simply, “Play Generica Online at first opportunity. Find Richard Royal and bring him into the game. Help him get beyond.”

“Richard. Fuck!” LivingDeadGrrl jumped up. “You were playing him like a puppet! Uh, no offense,” she said, glancing around at the toys.

“None taken. You lucky,” said Zuula.

“I wasn't. Not at first,” said Midian. “I didn't know who he was or where to find him. I assumed he was connected with games, so I focused on those. And when Generica Online came out, I played it simultaneously, along with several others. It wasn't until I found out his real name, and that I'd been running his guild in Neverquest for a few years, that I realized what was going on and brought him on board. I pretended to be a low-level starting character, so we'd have something in common when he jumped in, but I needn't have bothered. Konol got to him first, and Konol made him a pawn by giving him ludicrous amounts of power. You see, Konol made him a dragon.”

“Oh. Oh my...” Madeline said. “Yeah, that's a laht of powah.”

“He was the dragon. He was the dragon PC!” Thomasi rubbed his beard. “He was... Rotgoriel.”

“I didn't know why he chose that name, originally,” said Midian. “And it turns out that he didn't.”

“Then who did?” Threadbare asked.

“Rotgoriel did.”

“Straight answers, please!” Chase interrupted. Threadbare noted approvingly that she'd dug out a pad of paper and was taking notes.

“Ah... it gets a bit complicated. When a dweller visits this world through Konol's magic, they are infused into the body of someone who already dwells there. And reality rewrites itself, so that person's past no longer matters, and their personality and mind are fully given over to the visitor. They are pretty much erased from reality, their previous connections severed, and they become a nigh-immortal plaything of whoever transferred over.”

Thomasi drew a long breath. “You're saying I killed a middle-aged human and took his place.”

Midian dipped her head. “Essentially, though murder doesn't quite fit. You become them, for all intents and purposes. Temporarily at first, then permanently when the trap closes, and all immortality is lost. And for what it's worth, I did the same to some poor elven girl.”

They digested that for a bit, then looked to Aunarox.

“As did I,” she confirmed. “Although the race most of us chose is lost to time. The remaining ones are often, ironically, mistaken for djinn and killed on site.”

“Dat explain much,” Zuula said.

“Much, but not all,” Midian said, squinting at the djinn. “I do not know how you retained your memory of what happened.”

“With great effort,” said Aunarox. “Once I found my memories of home fading, and my very powers shifting to conform to new realities, I found a secure place to lock myself away. Ironically, a prison for entities the dragons could not properly... digest. And after Rotgoriel brought me out from there, I found that spending time in places that are dimensionally adjacent slowed my assimilation further. I have spent a great deal of time in dungeons, and merchants' packs, and other such things.”

“We are getting away from the point,” said Threadbare. “What exactly did Richard do to make things go wrong?”

“He didn't, exactly. It was a bad situation, and—” Midian caught herself. “Right. Straightforward. So most of the time, players take the place of existing people, hollowing them out. But it turns out it doesn't work that way with players who become dragons. When they return to their own world, the dragon takes their body over again.”

“The Simurgh!” Aunarox sat up, eyes white and wide. “That explains much! Well perhaps not to you.”

“Smurf?” Asked Thomasi.

“No. Simurgh. It was one of us who had somehow created a body, that of a great serpent with birdlike wings. He claimed to be a dragon. Now I know he was!”

“I see...” said Midian. “So Konol has tried this thing before. What became of the Simurgh?”

“Dead, I believe. He tried to warn us of a great calamity, and was punished for his impudence. The lords of my kind do not look kindly upon lessers telling them that they are wrong. Which is why I did not take anyone with me, when I hid myself away.”

“But what went wrong?” Threadbare pushed.

“Aunarox wasn't the only one to hide herself away,” said Midian. “An old one did as well, and for longer. And when Rich and I and a few others tried to solve the problem with Konol, and end the exploitation of countless worlds, they invited themselves along for the ride. They almost devoured Konol.”

“Oh shit. Oh shit, that was that thing, that thing I tried to eat,” LivingDeadGrrl paled.

“And the things that might still be in our next stop,” said Midian. “I'll talk about that later. What you need to know is that behind this world, there is a space between. And behind that space, there is a place where the towers of every world hold up the reality of everything that is. It is where gods are born and die, and it is where we went, eventually. Konol is in there, dying for real, but very slowly, thanks to one of my most powerful tricks. And so is Rotgoriel, and another dragon friend, and an egg. And if we can reunite them with Richard, then we might fix things. Maybe.”

“I would suppose this is where the mirror comes in,” said the Phantom.

“Yes. We left it behind, when we went to the tower.” Midian leaned back until her head thumped on the hull behind her. “Stupid. So damned stupid. But we had a lot going on at the time, even for me. I'm... more limited when I'm working in this form, now that time is mostly frozen back at home.”

“Wait. Say that again?” Thomasi stood up, and took a quick step toward her.”

“The spell I cast in the tower touches both dimensions. And in it, a dying Richard is slowly reaching his end, at a rate of a millisecond for every month, here. Eventually he WILL die, as will Konol, and then I don't know what's going to happen. But it will be bad.”

“But we have the mirror now,” said Threadbare.

“Yes. I found a way out of there, not a pleasant one. It drove me mad, and I barely survived. I came back to Pat babbling and broken, and if he hadn't been as intelligent as I, he wouldn't have been able to decipher my ramblings. And the second he did, he imprisoned me and locked the mirror away under the heaviest guard he could muster.”

“Why?” asked Threadbare.

“Because he was careless in our world. And in that world, he's cut off from the net that we all swim in, with his enemies closing around the brain-modified player he hijacked to get in here permanently. And he fears that if time is restored on that side, that they'll end him, and he'll die in this world. It's simple self-preservation.”

“But he die too, eventually, when Konol go,” pointed out Zuula.

“Probably. But it's a matter of centuries before he has to worry about that.”

“So we need to get the mirror to the place where the towers are,” said Threadbare.

“Yes. There's a relic from the older times, a Golemist from back when it was the daemons' turn at the cycle. Well, he's a Golemist now. He was probably something else when the world worked differently. But he guards one of the few remaining rifts to the space behind the world, and from there, we can reach the tower. Maybe. If we can get past the old one who waits there.”

“He's still there? Shit,” said LivingDeadGrrl.

“Those things are used to waiting for millenia and calling it a short time,” said Midian. “It's probably still there. And that's only one of the problems. See, that place where the Golemist resides was on the very front of the dragon war, and there's every likelihood that—”

Feet clattered on the stairs outside, and Threadbare looked up to see Stormanorm bursting through the door, breathing hard through his veil.

“Ma'am?” he said when he'd caught his breath.

“Sir?” said Midian, standing.

“You remember how you told us to run if we saw a dragon?”