Imperial Stream

Silence fills the viewing room as the hundreds of rulers within the room all focus all of their attention on the screen at the center of the room. At the aftermath of The Winter Wolf’s battle with the devourer.

“He won…” Diane mutters, both relief and surprise in her voice. “He really won…”

Tears begin to fall down her face from her worry and anxiety all crashing at once, her hopes fulfilled. And at the same time, the various rulers across the Imperial Stream all show their own reactions ranging from relief to shot and even anger, in the leviathan and Sovereign’s cases.

Unlike the other viewing rooms across the universe, the Imperial Stream is the only one that remains silent during the aftermath. Many of the rulers within it even leave the viewing room in order to make preparations for this new shift in the universe.

In the multiverse.

Other rulers begin to approach Diane with more offers of friendship, attempting to get closer to the adopted mother of the only pseudo progenitor in existence.

Diane quickly gathers herself back together and reenters her official mode as she begins talking with the rulers. But she can’t help but occasionally look back at the screen with a smile on her face.

I’m so glad he’s okay…

Wolf

Sapphire scowls at me, clearly showing her anger. But she doesn’t say anything until she summons my portable system store and drags me to sit down on a chair, having realized that I’m not really able to move right now.

After she gets me situated, which ends up being a rather awkward process, she stands up in front of me and crosses her arms, her scowl still ever present.

Then we just kinda sit here for a while without her saying anything. As if she was busy trying to think and taking advantage of the fact that I can’t speak right now.

Eventually she finally speaks, “I understand why you did what you did, and I can’t say that I wouldn’t do it myself if I was in your shoes…”

I blink at her words, feeling rather surprised. Only for her scowl to turn into a glare that has me really understanding those ‘if looks could kill’ quotes I read about all the time.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m fucking pissed,” she finishes, making me clearly understand that she is a hypocrite.

Then again, I’d probably be pissed as hell if she did what I did to her to me, so… we’re both hypocrites in this case?

“Do not ever do that again, do you understand me?” she asks, only to narrow her eyes slightly as she no doubt remembers I can’t speak. And after a short pause, a faint grin stretches across her face and she tilts her head slightly. “Since you’re doing nothing right now, how about we have a nice, long chat about this?”

Doing nothing? Really?

I can’t even close my eyes right now…

She clearly doesn’t care as she begins going on a rather harsh tirade about what I did.

Guess I’ll be here for a little while.

My movement finally begins to return to me as the lines across my body start flashing with the pale blue light from before. Which interrupts Sapphire’s little rant and makes a pout cross her face.

Is she seriously that upset that I can move again now?

I narrow my eyes, feeling slightly surprised that I can already do that again. Then I feel my control over the lunar ice element skyrocket again, bringing it back to what it was before using my domain.

Nice.

Over the next few seconds, I gradually feel myself being able to move again, at which point I bow my head slightly towards Sapphire, tell her, “I’m sorry, but I would still do the same thing all over again if the situation was repeated.” She opens her mouth, her scowl returning with full force, only to pause when I move forwards and pull her into a hug, to her surprise.

“Damnit…” she mutters into my chest before I hear sobs coming from the now-teenage girl.

We stay like this for a little while as she cries, but after nearly ten minutes of this, we both stiffen up slightly when we sense something appearing outside of the house. Then we share a glance and quickly make our way towards the entrance while dismissing the house entirely.

As soon as the portable system store in the form of a house is dismissed, a certain wolf pup comes into sight right outside of it, looking rather awkward. And the moment he enters my sight, I hear what sounds like something freezing over, but I’m not really sure what.

“I just paused the livestreams,” the wolf pup who I already know by now is Fenrir states, sounding like an awkward child who knows they did something wrong and is faced with his parents. Which is ridiculous considering his power and status. “We can speak in private now.”

I hum in response, following which silence fills the area for a while.

During Sapphire’s rant, she filled me in on some of the stuff the Progenitor of Ice filled her in on. So I know that he basically had a hand in what I’ve become up till now.

But…

“How much of my evolutions were planned by you?” I can’t help but ask after a while.

Fenrir stiffens for a second before relaxing again as he answers, “Everything you started out with. After that, little of what happened was under my control.”

I frown at that.

“Everything I started… but what about…” my eyes widen as a possibility comes to mind.

Then someone else’s voice – a familiar one belonging to The Reaper – enters the conversation rather briefly, “So that’s why you convinced me to go to the lore world of my universe!” And the voice fades away just as quickly again, leaving only a little laughter behind. The Reaper apparently taking pleasure in being manipulated like that.

“My bloodlines and my blessing,” I state, half as a statement and half as a question. Mostly a statement.

Fenrir nods his head, answering, “I convinced both the fae princess and Grim to travel to the lore world where they sired children. Then I manipulated things for your bloodlines to merge soon before the next Initialization was to occur.”