Isaac was somewhere in the solitary darkness. Not walking, he was without feet, or legs, or arms, or any form. He was the darkness, the empty, the nothing. He drifted. Drifted further. Further down, deeper. He drifted forever. Then he felt a cold wind, a cold that gnawed away the flesh and bit the bones. Bones he didn't have but still felt.
A scent on the wind captivated him. A woman's scent, a familiar scent. Not any woman he knew though. Not his conscious, but he knew on a deeper level. He drifted deeper.
Lying in the frozen ground, partially buried in the snow, was a pile of rags. A bundle of tattered, dingy strips of cloth with buttons sewn all over. He bent over to pick it up. Or at least, his conscious mind imagined the effort of bending over to pick it up and he imagined the sensation of holding the strange doll Pazuzu called Mr Squiggles. She had lost her doll. Back at the campsite.
He wasn't back there.
Someone else reached the Mr Squiggles doll before him. Someone else's hand took hold of the abstract cloth figure. A colossal hand covered in crimson skin mottled with charcoal black and yellow like stained bones. The doll was dexterously pinched between two finely tapered fingernails on a hand large enough to engulf Isaac's entire body in its grip. A delicate, feminine grip. The hand was connected to an equally massive arm, the arm led to a shoulder. The shoulder produced another arm, two arms on a side. It was a rounded, feminine shoulder connected to a slender and prominent collarbone. The skin over the collarbone had more and more blackened splotches, so much that as Isaac traced the contours up the neck became predominantly black.
It was a long and graceful neck, stretched up proudly and leaning slightly to the side. That was to make room for its neighbor, a second neck with mostly red skin and on the other side of that, a third covered in bone yellow. Three heads, heads with narrow chins, delicate jaws, full lips, defined cheekbones, tall foreheads with proud horns. Two horns on the left and right head but three on the center head, the red one. Six eyes, bright blue eyes. The hair was long and pulled back, all flowing together behind the separate heads. Six dark, feathered wings stretched out behind her back.
The three headed giant woman was buried in the ice with only her bust exposed. A bust he could fall down like a crag between boulders.
She was submerged in a frozen lake in a recessed pit. A ring of cliffs surrounded the sheet of ice all around them. A circular cliff. Another ringing plateau was visible even further away. Many. Terraces formed by concentric circles.
Isaac shielded his eyes from the wind and ice blown about when the gargantuan devil woman flapped her wings. When the squall died down there was an open pool with a normal sized, single headed woman standing at the edge. She was a pokegirl, an infernal he didn't have a name for. An adult version of Pazuzu's breed. She threw her arms around him and he felt warm and was overcome by that unfamiliar scent his body recognized. "You're finally back!"
She was obviously talking to him but why? He didn’t know how she knew him or how he knew her. But they did. He returned her embrace and kissed her deeply, like a reuniting lover would. It wasn't a choice, wasn't his decision. It was an action free of his conscious mind. He was merely a passenger watching this experience unfold. He still didn't have arms or hands but he had sensation and he could feel the pressure and texture and softness and warmth. He had the perception of where his hands would be, all over her body. Everywhere he wanted to touch, all at once. "Ooh, not now darling. We don't have time." She playfully swatted one of his infinite, insubstantial manipulators.
How was he here?
"I copied Candi's methods when I made this doll for Pazuzu. When she threw it into the rift it created this link, allowing us to be together for a few moments. Listen to me, they're going to turn on their machine again. They don't understand the repercussions. Just like the Greek tragedies, hubris will bring disaster for everyone, but the old playwrights had a way to give everyone their happy ending. Don't go back. Retreading the same ground only wears it out more. Don't doubt your intuition. It worked for Jesus, Odin, Gandalf, and every comic book hero, after all."
Isaac didn't understand anything she was saying and she was demonstrating no consideration for how much time he'd need to process it all. Suddenly she was a giant once more, the lips of her red mouth pressed right against his body. The mouth opened and he could see nothing but teeth and tongue. He tipped forward, careening past the point of no return as a voice reverberated through the fleshy walls of the throat surrounding him. "Goodbye Zy-"
Isaac's eyes snapped open and his heart hammered in his chest. There was the dimmest grey morning light coming into the room. He was in bed with Elena, who turned unhappily in her sleep from experiencing the stress of the dream across their delta bond.
-
"Ike…"
It took Isaac a while to respond with a subdued hmm with a questioning inflection. He had been slow to process Chandrakanta's gently whispered monosyllable. The two of them had finished milking minutes ago, they weren't paying attention to howmuch time stretched by as the sun climbed higher into the sky outside. "You know how I give everyone nicknames? I have wanted to call you Ike for… a long time."
"Ike," Isaac said as if he were testing it out for himself.
"Mmmhmm," the Megami responded with another two low, musical sounds. She was very subdued, reserved, this morning. Gentle with every word, like if she spoke too forcefully the vibrations would cause something delicate to shatter. "I do not know why I have not brought it up until now. Jin… Jin is tough, monosyllables. Neasa could be Nes, though it is a little similar to Nel. Leksya is already fine. Ana is okay but I think Hita works better, credit to Jin."
Isaac couldn't find fault in any off the nicknames put forward, but he was curious though. They'd been silent the entire time so far, save for his brief explanation of his alarming dream. Mostly he was fixated on being eaten by the figure he called 'Titty-Satan.' What the hell was that about?
Isaac asked a question out of curiosity and to avoid having his mind return to the bizarre dream. "How come you give everyone nicknames, Candi?"
Chandrakanta put the milk pail down on the floor and then leaned back against Isaac's chest, shifting a few times to settle back into his embrace. "Because 'Chandrakanta' is a lot of name between friends. Then I just wanted to be able to reciprocate once they start using Candi. It is silly, I know…"
Isaac didn't think it was silly. Or, he thought it was but everyone did things that were silly and this was harmless and endearing, in a way. Why today though? It was as if…
As if she was gripped by the same unspoken apprehension he'd been feeling ever since he woke up. Both of them had an air of apprehension. Chandrakanta's heart was beating unusually fast the entire time. Normally she was her calmest during these moments. "It's finally the day, isn't it," Isaac asked.
Chandrakanta couldn't hide the tension that grew within her at his question with so much bodily contact between the two of them. She settled back down, pushing herself against him a little firmer than when she was truly relaxed. "I do not think I have shared anything significant about today," she responded.
"No, but there's been something…" Isaac paused to recall all of the memories when he caught the subtle signs on her face. "Something I think you've been dreading. For a long time. Every once in a while I can just see it in your eyes. Feel it across your bond."
Chandrakanta sighed as she stood up. She turned around and was staring off into the infinite distance. Her eyes weren't shining with their prismatic, dancing glimmers. They were two solid, pale disks. Cold and sombre as the moon. She reached out with her hand, slowly inching her fingertips closer to his face until they made tiny contact. She brought her other hand up to the other side of his face and cupped his cheeks as she lowered to straddle his lap. "I am not the only one. You have been distant ever since the incident at the camp. What is it you have seen?" She was looking through him, her eyes were pointed at his face but only to indicate attention. She didn't seem to be focused on anything at all.
But there was something in her eyes, a reflection of something Isaac had been trying to ignore, failing to acknowledge. Something he only could see with the third eye that invaded his face a year in the past. "You remember the paths?"
Chandrakanta nodded. "The infinitely branching paths you see through your eye."
"There's only one now. We passed all of the forks and it just goes straight and then it… ends."
Chandrakanta sighed. "Then you know what I know."
"Then you know why I'm being distant," Isaac muttered.
Chandrakanta shook her head. "No I do not."
Isaac grit his teeth. "Because I'm a coward who hides from his feelings and I can't look at anyone without knowing that... That…"
"That everything is about to end," Chandrakanta asked without it being a question.
"How long have you known," Isaac asked the Megami.
"It was my very first vision of the future," she answered sadly. "A great tapestry, burning and fraying. I was nothing but a single fiber in a single strand."
She knew the entire time? Isaac couldn't believe that. He never would have guessed she knew what was coming. "How do you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Stay so positive and uplifting when you know all of this horrific shit is right on the horizon," Isaac answered. “When no one else does. When no one else wants to know.”
Chandrakanta sighed, smiled sadly, and turned her face towards the warmth of the light coming through the kitchen window. "I have had a great deal of practice. I suppose it is where I focus my attention. I keep myself in the present and orient myself towards the good."
"That doesn't seem like enough…" Isaac muttered.
She leaned forward, and pulled his head towards her. Her voice seemed deeper and louder as he could pick up all of the reverberations through her chest. "No… No it is not. I suppose what I really tell myself is that… It is all meaningless. And that is what makes it beautiful. Every precious second…"
Isaac sighed and rested his head against her for a moment. "Can you let me up? I want to go see if anyone else is awake." Isaac swallowed. Chandrakanta lifted herself off of him with nothing but a sad smile.
Isaac took a hesitant step and kicked over the milk pail, spilling the contents over the hardwood floor. Isaac was gripped by panic, watching the white fluid flow along the seams of the individual panels. He grabbed a towel and dropped to his knees to wipe it up. "It's okay, Isaac." Chandrakanta said. He didn't really process the meaning of the words that followed as he wiped. "There's nothing you can really do. The damage was done before any of us were aware. It would be like holding together a sandcastle after it sinks below the tide. I'm just grateful for the time we've had and if I could have one selfish wish, it would be for just one more moment."
Isaac pulled the towel away and looked in confusion. The fluid wasn't getting picked up by the cloth. It wasn't getting pushed into a wider puddle. It was smudging, blurring, stretching out and thinning to be transparent. The milk, the floors, the rag. Everything.
Chandrakanta's words sunk in. It wasn't the spill that was okay. It was something else. Something he didn't understand. He turned to look to her for an explanation but she was frozen. Fading. Distant.
Everything was.
-
During the same moments in which Isaac and Chandrakanta were expressing milk into the usual pail, deep underground in a facility built on a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the Sourthern hemisphere of the Earth, stood a frail, hunched, solitary figure. He was surrounded by warding sigils and encased in a protective suit; layered with protection against psychic intrusion. Sweat matted down thin white hair against his bruised and spider vein covered scalp and beads of perspiration ran down his jowled cheeks. Vapor fogged up his thick lensed glasses. The elderly man waited in fear and anticipation to witness the fruits of the labor and investments of all those he had deceived, charmed, and manipulated. The project had faced many setbacks and required many sacrifices, but here he stood, ready to usher in his new world order.
Claude Sukebe was the grandson of Anton Sukebe, the founder of the Cult of Sukebe. He had quickly become disillusioned with the bizarre religious beliefs of his family as a child, but the appearance of the so-called authors reignited something in his soul. The beliefs of his grandfather were wrong, but had they been that wrong? Perhaps it wasn't in pokegirl genetics where the path to godhood lay, but in the travel between dimensions. So he returned to the fold and used the same tools as his grand patriarch to position himself at the top. Charisma, confidence, and fairy tails targeted at the egos of his audience. Soon he had ensnared many of the rich, the powerful, and the gifted in his exciting and chic new beliefs.
Just as bogus as those of Claude's grandfather. And just as lucrative.
What did Claude hope to gain with this venture? The power of the authors. Sukebe discovered a method to travel between dimensions and changed the world in a way that could never be repeated. Ranma Saotome was pulled across the dimensions and had a world spanning impact as well. The humans Sanctuary referred to as authors were brought across the same barriers and they reshaped the world yet again.
Through knowledge, empathy, or action, every single time, the common element was the travel from one universe to another. That had to be the key. The disaster of the first test had nearly destroyed his dream, but just like his grandfather Anton, Claude was able to spin misfortune into fortune. By blaming failure on someone or something, anyone or anything, besides himself. Ensure only successes stuck to his name.
A countdown displayed on a clock set in the wall started to cycle down. He was the only soul present, the rest of the leaders and the lab crew observed remotely. They were afraid, understandably, after 'the enemy' struck down the observation party last year. There was no enemy, a trick of the human eye was responsible for the 'great eye.' Claude had been warned about the risk of a backlash of energy when the portal was opened.
That was why Claude had not been present. It was why he arranged for those most resistant to his influence, those least valuable to the cause, those who were beginning to waver in their 'faith,' to serendipitously earn the honor of being present. If the test was a success, they wouldn't be the ones to pass through the gate because no one was to pass through during the test phase. If the predicted disaster came to pass, then Claude had fewer obstacles.
He wasn't a mastermind, he was an opportunist. Quick witted, adaptable, and unburdened by a sense of mortality, that was what he was.
Power was the tool of the warrior, and Claude had no hope to best a powerful warrior. So Claude used the warriors and their power was his.
Wealth was the tool of the banker, and Claude had no hope to outspend the opulent financiers. So Claude used the money lenders and their finances were his.
Knowledge was the tool of the intellectual, and Claude had no hope to match a genius in a game of wits. So Claude used the geniuses and their knowledge was his.
Fame was the tool of the politician, and Claude had no hope of rallying more support than a charismatic demagogue. So Claude used the clerk and celebrity and their influence was his.
Claude mastered using the tool of people, and because of that, Claude would win every time.
Ten seconds left.
That was why he was about to transcend the limitations of his failing flesh.
Five seconds left.
That was why he was going to win.
Three seconds left.
Supreme power was so close now, and he would finally be able to bring about the perfect world that had captivated his imagination for his entire life.
One second left.
Claude breathed in deeply, he could feel the strength entering him already. He had finally achieved what he knew he was always destined for.
Zero.
The dimensional bore, a design developed and quickly abandoned by James Scott during his experimentation in cross dimensional travel, powered up and blasted through the layers of reality. It was discarded by the mad tech wizard for one simple reason.
Every time it penetrated the barriers between reality, it left lasting damage that compromised the cohesion of time and space. The man remembered as Sukebe developed an alternative portal technology that was far gentler and left a warning for humanity about the risks of his first design.
In one of his hidden puzzle cubes that was yet to be discovered. James Scott never imagined humanity wouldn't immediately seek out the hidden puzzle cubes once they were aware of their existence. They were hidden puzzle cubes. That's what they were for, to be discovered and solved.
And so, thanks to the unchecked hubris of an octogenarian con man and the severe autism of a deranged genius born nearly four hundred years earlier, the world ended. Like a machine whose gears suddenly seized up.
Isaac was left on the outside watching the whole thing unravel. He of course blamed himself in spite of Chandrakanta's last words to him. How could he not. He knew he contributed to some of the destruction. He could see the holes where the filaments were torn rather than burned. Those were him. All of him. Maybe if he hadn't unleashed his power one time, one fewer tear, one more stable spot. Maybe maybe maybe.
Isaac was alone with nothing but maybes. Alone in a totally empty world with nothing but a featureless flat white stone island surrounded by a lightless sea that stretched out infinitely in all directions. Painfully alone. With a crushing, glacial sadness. He couldn't bear it anymore and he couldn't understand why he had to. Because he couldn't understand, it was an injustice, and because it wasn't just he became angry. The anger boiled the bleak ocean and uncovered more sad and lonely memories which dissolved into streams that flowed into him and started the next loop of the spiraling turmoil. Loneliness, pain, sadness, anger. Layer upon layer like sedimentary rock. If there was any joyful memory it was intrinsically linked to at least one hurtful one and they evaporated in a flash like happiness always did.
It was unbearable yet it was also familiar. Mundane. Normal. It was his habit, his addiction to the depression of it all. He couldn't remember feeling anything else as clearly as he remembered this. It was why he willed himself to sleep, if what he had been doing was sleeping. It felt like sleep to him.
He’d been here before. He’d been here many times before. He’d been here forever. He’d been here for many forevers. It was when he dreamed. When he dreamed his rational mind gave over control to the subconscious and the subconscious was greater than the conscious. It, he, did things purely based on impulse and will. There wasn’t any doubt in his subconscious.
So what was the point of consciousness? To observe, interpret, and plan. A duality, a plurality, of mental processes working in tandem to manage the act of existence. He still existed. Nothing else did.
He had to fix this. Had to undo the destruction.
Undo. Return to a previous state. Go back. He could turn back time and… and what? He stared at the ruin of existence again. It really was like a tapestry like Chandrakanta said. Woven, back and forth, up and down, in and out. He imagined one thread must be time, and as he thought this the cord of time revealed itself to him. It was tangled, looped, and knotted. The thread was unraveling, worn out.
He’d done this before. Pushed back time, started over from the beginning. Returned and redid parts over and over again. Trying to get things to come out better, come out right. But retreading the same ground only wore it out more. She had said that…
That was strange. He’d been dreaming then. At least, it had felt like a dream. Felt like he was dreaming now. So he asked of the dream, How did this happen?
He had found himself here, where there was nothing. An immaterial and disembodied way of being. An empty universe, with nothing else and no constraints on him at all. So here he was everything and everything was him. Lonely and infinite.
He’d give up this boundless existence happily to not be alone.
He had stumbled into the universe that had been destroyed so recently. In this exact moment, actually, since there wasn’t time anymore. He could see it and the others all around him. Like the foam on top of the surface of a bubble bath but also like mirrors in a funhouse. Every bubble and reflection of a bubble was a universe.
That wasn’t right, he’d seen massive swaths of destroyed and dead universes. Yet here everything was. Everything but the one precious universe he’d been occupying still was, though some were right on the cusp of meeting the same fate as the one that had become home for him.
It had been premonitions. Visions of what was to come.
Damnit, he still hadn’t figured out time right, he’d been looking at it upside down.
Well, that was a small consolation.
As for the destruction, there were a few parties to blame. Sukebe. Sukebe had created a style of portal device that caused intense damage to the barriers between realities. These barriers healed over time, like all living things. Living was the only way Isaac could think of the things, looking at them. Sukebe realized this and developed another method of crossing dimensions.
Other humans discovered Sukebe’s design though, and made use of it. Reckless use of it. Use led by some old dude in a hazmat looking suit. Isaac had no idea who that was.
Isaac was the last one responsible. No, not Isaac. Isaac wasn’t culpable, it was the other part of him. The author part that was beyond Isaac’s awareness. Zypheit had caused some share of the destruction.
That’s who he was. That was the name he had invented for himself. The woman from his dream the night before the world ended, she seemed to know that. At least, she knew the start of the name.
Why the hell did she eat him? That really freaked Zypheit out. It was a primal fear, being eaten. Along with asphyxiation and burning.
It did make the whole ordeal stick in his mind though.
He reflected on what else she had said. Jesus, Odin, Gandalf, and every comic book super hero. What did they all have in common that worked out for them? And what was his instinct that aligned with that. Isaac’s own thought from earlier replayed itself in his mind as an answer. He’d give up this boundless existence happily to not be alone.
He would sacrifice it. Sacrifice this empty, meaningless infinite. Sacrifice this boundless potential and power. That was the commonality between all of those stories and many more. That was what his intuition was informing him. That was his instinct.
Sacrifice.
Isaac hesitated. Of course he doubted this would work. It defied all rationality but rationality was already dead. It wouldn't protest the transgression. He closed his eyes and focused. Just in case, there was something he wanted to say, even if it was too late to matter. "I wish we could have one more moment too…"
Zypheit heard the words and acted according to the intent. The god was sacrificed for the sake of the man and the infinite was broken apart into infinitely fragmented pieces. All that was Zypheit was compressed into a single lump of meat and it hurt more than any words could describe. Isaac lost all sense and awareness.
When he regained perception, he was lying on his back with his head propped up on something soft and warm. He stared up into a round face with pale skin, slightly plump lips, full and gracefully arched eyebrows, Indo-Iranian facial structure, and very wide, very alert eyes that were bright and cold white like a full moon. “I-I-I-” Chandrakanta stammered. “I did not see this. I did not- Isaac? Isaac how?”
Isaac groaned as he sat up. He was still on the little white circular island, except he wasn’t alone and there was… cosmic gore everywhere. Whatever metaphysical mode of being he possessed had been carved up and scattered everywhere and it was messy.
One little glob of the stuff was dissolving into nothing though. One portion spent to grant his wish. The wish for one more moment. With Chandrakanta had been the unspoken context.
An idea came to him like a thunderbolt and he grabbed the shoulders of the Megami who was utterly perplexed by her continued existence. “Candi, Candi I need you to focus. Will what I’m thinking work, yes or no?”
“What you are thinking? Isaac, I do not feel the bond. I cannot access your mind I- It was all supposed to be over before this how am I-”
Isaac moved his hands up to cup her cheeks. “Candi,” his voice was beginning to strain. “I’m losing my grip. Cosmic Awareness. Yes or no. Will what I’m thinking work?” She was still trembling and silently mouthed a single syllable over and over. “Candi I’m trying to get you one more moment, not just with me, with everyone. I promise.”
Her eyes flicked and came to focus on his face. A glimmer swirled around her iris. “Yes.” She nodded firmly. “I will serve as your conduit to the vast awareness of the cosmos. Mera upayog karen, mere prabhu.”
Isaac scowled. “Hey, I just realized what that means. Like, specifically what it means. I’m not… that.”
Chandrakanta’s face beamed with sublime joy as the link between their psyches expanded. “I think it will be entirely appropriate, if you accomplish what you intend. However, I will take much more joy in calling you Ike, mere pryaar.”
Isaac began his work, which wasn’t conscious work. He merely allowed his power, as little as he understood it, to connect with the Megami’s connection to the Cosmic Awareness. As little as he understood that. She had told him it would work though. Chandrakanta let out a deep groan, like nothing he’d ever heard from her before. “Candi, are you alright?”
Chandrakanta’s response was a gasp in a foreign language, but Isaac intuited that it had not been a vocalization of pain. “Yah paramaanand hai.”
The circular island suddenly climbed towards a sky that manifested as a brilliant, cloudless blue sphere above them. A brilliant golden disk shone directly overhead, illuminating a lush green world far below a towering stone monument of which they sat on the pinnacle. Isaac was suddenly larger than the statuesque Megami, much larger, and they were both wearing very little. They fell onto the couch together as they continued to let everything flow through as they focused on nothing but each other and became one.
Isaac’s consciousness stretched and expanded, reached out into the broken universe and pulled forth someone new.
Astoreth read the final line of text and sat the ream of papers down with a proud grin. She signed her name with a flourish and then pushed the stack over to Zypheit, who was seated opposite of her. She offered him her gilded fountain pen. He added his signature and the two clasped hands, becoming one.
Elena sat on her loveseat and leaned into Zypheit's shoulder. She put her book down in her lap, took a content sip of her tea, and tucked the lap blanket under her thigh. She pressed herself deeper into his embrace, tipping into him as they became one.
Jin grinned like a blissful fool as she pressed her palms into the magic circle. Across from her Zypheit returned her dorky smile as they channeled their magic into the ceremony. The energy circulated through their bodies as they became one.
Neasa laughed as Zypheit's draw wobbled. She stepped under his arms and pushed his arm up to aim properly. They held the draw together and it reminded her of the tree she drew against to defeat Samodiva. They let the arrow fly and watched its arc as they became one.
Oleksandra wiped grease off of her brow and nodded in appreciation at the machine she and Zypheit had finished constructing together. Massive and complex beyond either of their understandings alone, nevertheless it was complete. She engaged the switch, the engine hummed to life, power coursed through the systems. They felt the vibrations changing through everything as they became one.
Anahita breathed in, and Zypheit breathed with her. Their hearts beat in perfect time with one another as they sat and meditated. Their mouths opened in unison to exhale and through their breaths became one.
Gabi’s hand was grasped in Zypheit's; raised above their heads. They took one last bow together. The spotlight dimmed and curtains were drawn closed. When the two walls of fabric came together the two became one.
All of the discarded and dismembered parts of the cosmic corpus that formerly held the consciousness of the author Zypheit began to glow, melted into luminescent orbs, and streaked through the gap between realities to restore the damage done to the otherwise doomed universes. The restoration, revitalization of reality exploded in all directions, but only those nine entwined souls would ever have any recollection of what happened, and then only as the faintest dream.
A voice reverberated through all of it. An echo of Isaac’s voice. The guiding voice for the entire process. The voice said, “And then some deus ex machina bullshit happened.”
(-[|]-) End 17.3(-[|]-)
‘Mera upayog karen, mere prabhu.’ (मुझे उपयोग करें, मेरे प्रभु): “Make use of me, my lord” Hindi.
‘Mere pryaar’ (मेरा प्यार): “My love” Hindi.
‘Yah paramaanand hai.’ (यह परमानंद है): “this is ecstasy.” Hindi
Deep underground in a facility built on a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the Sourthern hemisphere of the Earth, stood a frail, hunched, solitary figure. Claude Sukebe waited in fear and anticipation to witness the fruits of the labor and investments of all those he had deceived, charmed, and manipulated. So he nearly had a heart attack when a pokekit suddenly shouted from behind him, "I am Pazuzu! Feel the snuggly grasp of evil on your soul!"
Claude turned as fast as his aged body allowed him to, which put his back towards the portal device just as the opening to another dimension actualized. Bitingly cold wind blew into the subterranean laboratory. A colossal red hand shot through the circular opening in the barriers between worlds and seized the alleged descendent of James Scott. Claude Sukebe was dragged through the opening to what, by all regards, appeared to be the realm of Inferno as depicted by a Florentine poet.
No one would come to know the fate of Claude Sukebe and no one would really come to miss his presence. For how elevated he had managed to place himself in society, society found it trivial to fill the meager gap his disappearance left.
Footage from the cameras in the lab did manage to record a figure emerging from the other side. While within the other dimension she appeared to be a predominantly red skinned infernal pokegirl with black feathered wings. However, as she crossed the boundary between worlds her image changed to that of a normal, very near human. In fact, the lab equipment even managed to scan her breed.
The FarFuck'd was recorded chastising the intruding pokekit, also a red skinned infernal. "Zuzi, what did I say about evil? You are a liminal being, Missy, and you need to behave as such."
The last recorded footage only contained recordings of the pokekit who identified herself as Pazuzu protesting childishly. "Don't wanna be good. Good girls have to eat veggies. Dark side had cookies!"
"They had cookies? What happened to them?"
"Pazuzu eat them!" The FarFuck'd could be seen fighting not to laugh as she disabled the laboratory's teleportation blockers from within and then exited, carrying the pokekit, via instant translocation magic.
-
Isaac turned the papers over in his hands. The first was his legal identification. Sponsored by the Sokoly Corps and Wronski family, initiated by Lieutenant Sobolvich, in recognition of his character and exceptional traits which would be of great service to the league, Isaac Mercurius was granted full legal citizenship within the Sapphire League and all its territories, granting him the right to own property, vote, and hold public office.
The second paper was the deed for the potion shop in Slov'yanka, essentially abandoned by the former owners after Samodiva's raid on the town. It had living quarters on the second floor and Isaac, along with Jin, Neasa, Oleksandra, and Anahita would take it up as their residence. Isaac was a property owner. So long as he made his payments to the city on time.
It shouldn't be too difficult. He could handle the potion making, he'd already gone through the recipes beforehand. Jin and Neasa could help out if there was a sudden surge in demand. The Enchantress had briefly despaired at being doomed to the life of a shop Witch until Isaac explained he would be able to do the bulk of the brewing and she would be free to produce custom items and curiosities. Once she had that assurance and saw the lab that came with the shop, Jin was enthusiastically on board. Elena and Neasa made acquiring the main ingredients, the berries and herbs introduced to the world along with pokegirls, trivial.
There was something humorous about Isaac winding up in the role of an apothecary, of sorts. Apples only fell so far from trees, even if the fruit fell through time, space, and dimensions of reality unknown in the process. Still, it was income that was safer than hunting ferals and shelter more comfortable than a yurt. He was finally providing something for the women in his life.
He'd feel more pride eventually, maybe, but he was still a bit lost in the enormity of recent events. Recent events he still was yet to understand the scope of and barely anyone else in the world was even aware of.
Events that saw the Vorona Corps suddenly being the Sokoly Corps, falcons instead of crows. Events that saw the entire landmass of the Sapphire League migrating back to its original position to the North to make room for the return of the Black Sea. Events that saw the rest of the map similarly changed.
Such massive differences and yet things also transpired the exact same. It was enough to make Isaac’s head feel like it was going to split open.
At least, as nothing more than an infinitely small fraction of the infinite, he wasn't stuck huddling in a tiny corner of the multiverse desperately trying not to knock anything off of its metaphorical shelf.
Elena touched his elbow with intent as they walked down the road together. Anahita was cleaning the new home in preparation for the move. Jin was exploring every nook and cranny of the new lab as well as all of the devices that had been left within. Oleksandra was at the library. Neasa was out with Golloriel and Luljeta.
It was just the two of them heading back to Elena’s place to be ready for Tanya to stop by with a borrowed wagon to move Isaac’s possessions. “What’s on your mind, Isaac?”
“I feel like I haven’t changed,” he answered.
“I thought you could tell that you were different now.” Elena responded. He had shared with them that he was different. Limited, fully integrated. More ‘here’ and not distantly tethered to something so far away it transcended the concept of distance itself.
Isaac shook his head. “No, I mean, changed as a person. I still feel like… I still have the same flaws. Still… I don’t know. Weak. Lazy.”
“Isaac, you have never been lazy. Unmotivated at times, yes, but you have shown willingness to dedicate effort and diligence towards goals. You are weak because you’re human, or is this you being weak like Astoreth is strong?” Isaac looked into her frosty blue eyes without responding for a while. The Grandelf held eye contact with him until he shrugged helplessly as his focus returned to the road they were walking down. Elena sighed. “You’ve changed, Isaac. It’s just difficult for any of us to see how we change ourselves, because we live every moment of being us.”
Isaac looked at her face again and she merely gave a tiny smile. The two of them kept walking back to her home in silence. After a few minutes something sprang to mind. A happy thought that brought Isaac out of his frowning introspection. “Oh, something I saw before the…” What the fuck did one even call what had happened? “Before things got fixed. It was like… other story lines. For the other authors. I couldn’t tell much but,” he smiled briefly. “They didn’t die, like we thought. I don’t know where, but they all got away. Somewhere. I hope they’re all doing okay.”
Elena reflected his smile. “I hope they’re doing well too.”
-
Chandrakanta stopped suddenly and stiffened with a sharp gasp. Astoreth noticed the sudden alertness and looked to the Megami. "What, do you see her?" They were outside looking for Pazuzu. The infernal child had vanished inexplicably once again. Astoreth glowered when the Megami pulled a buzzing communication device from between her breasts. She stashed nearly everything there.
Astoreth's expression softened into disbelief when Chandrakanta called out a name upon answering. "Izzy?" The Megami seemed in complete disbelief, with good reason. Their mutual friend had been missing for over a decade, presumed dead.
The call was loud enough that Astoreth could hear the person on the other end. It was her voice. "Candi, where are you?"
Chandrakanta started to answer, "I'm at Star's, we-"
Someone arrived via teleport. A very near human woman with olive skin and curly brunette hair. She was dressed in a bleached white, baggy blouse with a long skirt woven in vibrant, multicolored tribal patterns. Her eyes were the same bright blue as those of the pokekit she held in her arms. The very pokekit everyone of Astoreth's household was looking for.
"Izzy!" Candi shouted with joy as she threw herself forward to seize the FarFuck'd in a hug. Anticipating this reaction, 'Izzy' lowered Pazuzu to the ground beside her and then returned the buxom Megami's embrace with matching enthusiasm.
"Candi," she sang with equal delight before they both were hugging and dancing and squeaking together. Astoreth approached cautiously. This person was supposed to be dead, after all. When 'Izzy' was released by Chandrakanta the FarFuck'd turned and looked up at the massive infernal and extended a hand. "Star."
Astoreth took the hand and gave it a firm shake while studying the small, very near human pokegirl intently. Then her expression cracked too and she dropped to hug her old friend. "Iyzebel, what happened? You've been missing for twelve years. The last we knew you transferred to frontier pacification. We thought one of the pussies must have got you but now… Why was Pazuzu with you?"
"She's my mama!" Pazuzu responded with childish exuberance and inappropriate volume.
"Zuzi, quiet voices," Iyzebel chided.
“Okay…” The pokekit responded sheepishly while lowering her head.
Chandrakanta and Astoreth stared in disbelief. While they weren’t sure what breed Pazuzu was, her unnatural skin coloration and infernal features certainly ruled out the very near human FarFuck’d. Yet as they held the two in their gaze their disbelief waned. Looking past the skin coloration, looking past the horn nubs and underdeveloped wings, looking past the superficial, they could recognize the features of their friend in the face of the pokekit. The structure of her nose, mouth, and brow. The mannerisms that she engaged the world through. It suddenly dawned on them that part of their instant affection for Pazuzu was from how much she reminded them both of Iyzebel, a friend from many years ago. Astoreth shook her head in disbelief. “Iyzebel, she’s your daughter?”
The FarFuck’d nodded firmly. “She is. That much I’m certain about although the rest is a long story.”
Pazuzu tugged on Iyzebel's sleeve. “No stories. Mama, I wanna go to my room. You meet ‘Gusta and Nadya and everybody."
"Not now, Pazuzu," Iyzebel responded as she reached down and pulled herself free from Pazuzu's grip. "Mama hasn't seen her friends in a long time and they have a lot they want to know."
There was a lot Chandrakanta and Astoreth wanted to know. The first question to come out, from the lips of the Megami, was, "Why isn't she a… Goth?"
Iyzebel rolled up her sleeve all the way to the shoulder, revealing unmarked, bare skin across the entire upper arm. "I reverted myself using the Dark Redemption technique." Iyzebel pushed away Pazuzu's hand as the pokekit started pulling on her dress this time.
Chandrakanta and Astoreth exchanged questioning glances. "So then…" Astoreth began with hesitancy. "Why isn't she a…"
"A FarFuck'd?"
Now the celestial and infernal exchanged looks of disbelief. Iyzebel had believed she was an ancient sorceress. Not the pokegirl breed, some figure from ancient human history. Chandrakanta recovered from the shock first. "Izzy, you know you're a FarFuck'd?"
The pokegirl of the breed famous for their delusional identities smiled brilliantly and nodded. "Zy-Isaac helped me realize." Iyzebel paused and bent down to pick up Pazuzu. The infernal child had been pushing against her knee in her impatient efforts to corral her mother in the direction she wanted.
"Wait, you know Isaac? How," Chandrakanta asked.
"Well, the reason I vanished without a word was I was brought in to lead a secret project to develop a method to abduct select individuals from other universes. I believe you know something about Sanctuary's disastrous author project."
"You led that project?"
"Oh, no. It wouldn't have gone nearly so wrong if I remained in charge. No, we were sabotaged during the first live test of the ritual. We selected an author of rising prominence but little influence. He had produced one or two very well received stories and had started and stopped part way through a few more. An author who went by Zypheit."
"Ma-ma…" Pazuzu whined and shook her mother's shoulder, causing Iyzebel to need to shift her hold on the pokekit.
"Zuzi, shush. Mama's still talking." Pazuzu relented her pestering with a puffy cheeked, tight lipped, scowly pout; crossing her tiny arms and swishing her tail with erratic flicks. "The blowback from the ritual failing threw me and Zypheit into a nonmaterial space between universes, which was…" Iyzebel's expression went carefully blank. "Uncomfortable."
She did nothing but hold her daughter for a long moment and then shook her head. "Eventually, Zypheit was able to divert us to one of the Esper inhabited parallel realities. One with a lot of antisocial whores and bitches who aren't tolerated anywhere else. A lovely plane known as Diz. Fortunately, given the ethereal state of being we had found ourselves in, I fit right in; given my delusion at the time."
"Diz, from Dante's Inferno," Astoreth asked instantly.
Chandrakanta's eyes slowly arched open. "You're Isaac's Titty-Satan? How did you become a giant three headed devil woman?"
Iyzebel's initial answer was to simply throw up the devil horns gesture with the hand that wasn't supporting most of Pazuzu's weight. She returned her hand to the small of her daughter's back and gave a weak smile. "Elena was right. I betrayed you three because of my pride. That idea gripped me when I de-evolved myself and a new delusion took over. Then, when I essentially became an Esper of sorts, well, there was nothing limiting my ability to embody that belief."
"But why did you eat him?"
Iyzebel laughed. "To make the dream memorable. That was the best connection I managed to establish and he forgets and misinterprets so many of them. It was the only way I had to communicate with him. Yes, I suppose Titty-Satan is a decent description for my form there. So, we were both stuck there, in incorporeality, and Zypheit decided to venture out back into the void to try to find a way for me to get back here. I stayed in Diz to work on an alternative, give him somewhere to return to if things didn't pan out." She frowned deeply. Her voice became dark. "It was a mistake. With the two of us, we didn't realize it but we were keeping our egos in check and coherent. Restrained our consciousnesses. On his own… he became lost in himself and expanded. No restrictions at all, he had to force himself into dormancy to not…" She shrugged. "I don't know what would have happened to him, but I… we would have lost him."
Iyzebel sighed and forced a smile. "He made it here though, and through some trial and error managed to integrate into this universe after destroying it only a few times." Chandrakanta and Astoreth were staring with matching expressions of total incredulity. Iyzebel waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, he reverted that every time it happened and it wasn't much fault of his. Things were already in a bad way thanks to the humans playing with Sukebe's dimensional bore." She grinned. "Zyph- Isaac took care of that with… well if he's an author let's call it a retroactive continuity change. Now, rather than damaging the fabric of reality it simply opens a portal to hell, which dear old Claude learned just recently."
Chandrakanta expressed her intense confusion with only one word. "Claude?"
Iyzebel bounced Pazuzu up so she could wave off the question. "Oh, don't worry about him, dear. It's a long story."
Pazuzu balled her fists and shouted, causing her mother to wince from the proximity to her ear. "Story time over, the end!”