Orphan At The Edge Of The World - 264 The Magician 22

Running on nothing but a little intuition and a resolve not to give up until there was nothing left, she carefully dragged Deacon with her as she clawed her way through shifted dirt. Their forced passage through it had loosened its centuries of settled stability. That barely managed to allow her to dig with her bare hands as she exercised the trickle of magic to alternate between different elemental sprites. It became a grueling cycle.

She’d clean the air some so they could keep breathing. She’d run enough healing to keep Deacon alive and dig a little more. Water and food was added to the mix every once in a while. She’d also completely pass out once in awhile, waking in a panic and bringing everything back from the brink of unsurvivable.

A small trail of broken or used up magic items and a couple of lesser enchanted weapons marked their progress. Because she didn’t have the luxury of a proper rest, her uses of magic began eating through the vested lifespan and spiritual integrity she possessed. At one point, the spiritual debt between them was burned through but she didn’t change a single part of her routine.

“Leave me. I’m ruined anyway. Save your healing for yourself,” Deacon said.

She knew that he didn’t completely mean it. He wanted to live as much as she did. His will was only wavering because of pain and hopelessness.

Wren snapped at him. “Shut up. Your job is to drink water and shovel magic paste into your face until we’re out of here.”

He grew silent and pensive. A few feet an hour turned into one or two and eventually it was only a few inches. They had ran into harder packed dirt and rock.

The last good weapon they had, she started using as a pick and shovel. Wren cursed herself for not using it from the start but there was always a chance that things wouldn’t be safe and they might need the sword for self defense. But, in the end, it had joined the rest in getting chipped up and slowly destroyed to help them claw to freedom.

When she ran into a thick wall, her spirit cracked a little. As she cried, Deacon dug deep through his fevered delirium to attempt killing himself to give her a better chance at survival. For the last half day, she started showing signs of infection induced illness because her body had been too stressed out and kept low on resources for too long.

Nearly in hysteria, she rasped with energy she couldn’t really afford to spend, “Damn it, don’t you understand? If it was only me, I would have given up long ago. Why should I suffer this just for me? Don’t die. You’re the only reason I have to keep trying.”

She swallowed back a sob and took the scroll that that would grant them the ability to ‘ghost’ for only a few seconds. Steeling her self, Wren held onto Deacon tightly and ripped the scroll, pulling him for all her protesting body was worth. There was nothing but more dirt on the other side.

True to her nature, she drew on the power of her patron to keep them ghosting just a little longer. Over the next few seconds, it became harder and harder to pull him. From her perspective, it seemed like he was getting heaver at an exponential rate.

But the truth was, she was burning through her power of existence to force the patron granted ability to do more than it was meant to. The only way to do that was to borrow power from the Entanglement Key and it only accepted one form of currency. By the time she was little more than a shadow who had to scramble to keep a constant grip, she pulled them into a small space with very little air.

She was too weak to do much of anything and he was dying. All the struggle and suffering was seconds away from amounting to nothing. With the desperation of the damned, she felt around the small space for anything to save herself or Deacon.

The only thing in the small space was a broken and caved in display case. At one point in its past, it had been warded so powerfully that even a lesser god would have had to sacrifice much to open it. It still was strong enough to kill any living being that tried to breach it.

In her strange, nearly non-existent state and the ward’s degradation, her power of existence was so weak that she didn’t trigger it. Reaching inside, she enveloped the three contents with her shadowy body and sacrificed the rest of what she had left to request her patron to do what They could to save them. With a wrench of inner will that unraveled what remained of her faint existence, she used her connection with the key to reach Orison.

The young mage was unable to respond but that wasn’t true for the desolate realm that was instantly moved to seize what she had found. The wispy fragments of Wren, the newly dead Deacon and the ‘sacrifice’ were all drawn in. The outcome wasn’t a predictable one.

***

In the depths of the ‘psychedelic gas’ that was the completely neutralized miasma of the creature Orison had once been eons ago, a gloating person made of void with electric blue eyes was toying with a phantom key. They had been taking their time to relish their victory as they always had. In whimsical steps that would only measure in millions of physical miles at a time, the avatar had been taking the key and its contents down to the heaviest depths of the stretched out reality.

Along the way, it had created a wake of hundreds of thousands of souls that had become lost and trapped in the multicolored gas that demarcated the space between many material planes. The avatar’s movements had drew chaotic remnants and scattered alien entities that dwelt within it as well. As soon as the avatar crossed the boundaries to the lower dimensions, they would trigger the hungry realm within. Once it devoured all it could, They would shape the soul that carried the ‘Tower of Ruin’ into a powerful new avatar for the ‘Crawling Chaos’ to play with.

The avatar suddenly found that it couldn’t move. Time-space had shattered in their immediate area. It was only a momentary discomfort. Adjusting to the broken and fragmented law around it, they reached for the key as they felt a strong pull of gravity start to form. The avatar giggled as it allowed itself to be pulled in. As soon as they corrupted the core, they’d simply warp the whole mess to the lower dimensions.

Halfway in, however, key and tower exploded violently. Caught off guard, the avatar was shredded under a force it wasn’t prepared to counter. Laughing, the avatar began pulling itself together along with all the rich, condensed essence and natal planar seeds formed from materialized law comprehensions.

They no longer had to go to the lower dimensions. The avatar could gather it all up and make another avatar right on the spot. At least, that’s what they began doing before they were pulled into the center of the explosion by a gravity so great that it distorted time-space faster than the regenerating avatar could adjust to it.

Within moments, the newly formed miniature black hole drew in everything within nearly a million miles of it, spewing two massive violent jets of destroyed matter and super condensed essence. As several more tier five humanoid shaped voids appeared to reclaim losses and calculate much greater gains than expected, seventy-two layered spheres sprang into being and drew the avatars to their destruction as well.

Several local years went by until the current astral cycle met its end and a new one began. The ‘black hole’ cracked like the shell of an egg and a giant Duran floated out of it. In one massive hand, he held a Tower with a phantom key floating in front of its door. In the other, there was a shield made of law comprehensions.

The newly ascended tier six being, a world god level powerhouse, was immediately flanked by two tier six avatars. The two beings, incomprehensible in their alien glory, moved to destroy Duran only to find that they suddenly occupied the same space. A third unseen one backed off just in time to keep from joining the other two in the self destruct such a vulgar violation of Greater Reality’s laws enacted upon them.

The crazy hermit appeared and sniffed in irritation at the one who got away. “Too soon or is it too late this time. Well, two out of three ain’t baaaad.”

He got to slurping away as his book ate a set of terrifyingly powerful conduits. It was so much that neither of them could finish their meals in one sitting. To keep the remnant chrism and conduit pieces from infecting the reality they were supping in, they both tucked a fold of space away and turned large amounts of it into more ‘psychedelic gas’, strengthening the durability and duration of the reality they were currently in by untold years.

The hermit turned to Duran. “I’m not going to explain this all to you because you won’t understand. I’m tempted to get vulgar but my baby’s here. I have to watch my language.

Nomy protested but the crazy hermit just cooed at the living book and praised it until it gave up.

Done with pacifying his ‘baby’, the hermit said, “Get yourself to the higher dimensions immediately before the broken laws mend. Don’t give anything you gained from that creature to anyone that will ever step out of the higher dimensions. That would just doom them.

“Congratulations on setting this up but don’t get the wrong idea. Long after we’ve forgotten what happened today, they will remember. You have until the great cycle of the Maelstrom begins again to make yourselves too much of a pain or too much of a waste of time to pursue.

“Beings more powerful that what you have become have pretty much ceased giving a sh- sugar beet about anything but themselves and their closest of closest. You’ll be on your own when the next wave comes to crash over you. Either enjoy yourself to the fullest while waiting for the end to come or push yourself to the brink to have the smallest of chances.

“Mine and Noden’s debt to the, what did they call themselves, the ‘flying spaghetti monster’ are paid. Here, let me leave a soul message for Them and I’m out of here. The next time me might meet, I won’t remember either of you. And out of the kindness that I once had long ago, don’t expect me to be… nice.

“Don’t worry about killing me in self defense either. My higher self will just remake my story somewhere else and probably won’t remember long enough to care. Later, insignificant wor- dear friends.”

Duran sighed at the man’s passing. He had questions he wanted to ask but the hermits whole speech and disappearance happened so fast that even the expanded senses of a tier six could only barely grasp them. With a deepening feeling of sad endings, he turned his attention to the key and tower.

With a twist of the key, a single mote of soul core flew out of the tower. “Forgive me Reese but I couldn’t forget you. Forgive me Orison but I can’t let her go. We can both agree that Gan deserves some happiness too.”

With another twist, a drop of condensing soul stuff turned into a speck of core before it flew off into the distance. The space in Duran’s hand was soon occupied by a comatose deep elf and another newly formed speck of soul core. Elf and reincarnating woman were warped to a safe location near where they had originally came from.

“With some of Reese’s wisdom and White’s tolerance, Green can help you sever your ill fate with dark souls reaching for redemption.” he said.

With one great twist of key, a portion of condensed soul and core came out. “Piran has enough from you to stand on his own now. There’s no need to shelter him from his incomplete fate anymore. He has powerful family to do that for him now. And tangling yourself with them… it’s too many complications for you. Besides, Wendy doesn’t like you and… the one who longs for you, she doesn’t like Wendy or Piran much.”

A section of gray space opened nearby. Duran reached out a massive finger and handed off the soul to a worried older man that looked a lot like Zeke.

“I don’t know when or if we’ll meet again, Orison. But if we do, even if you’re a monster or a saint, count that you have a friend in me.” he said.

With a final use of the key, Duran locked away enough of the tower’s influence that the remaining soul’s fragile state could endure it. After sending the tower on its way with the key inserted into its door, the infant tier six returned to normal human size and faced the old obsidian elf woman who had just shown up.

“Couldn’t we have done more for him, Medea? After everything that Orison’s went through, he still only has seven rings,” Duran said mournfully.

The old woman chuckled compassionately and reached up to pat the ‘boy’s head. “My sweet child, others will see that too and think what you think now… Did his path ever seem lesser or weaker than yours? In the beginning, his desire to help you behind Piran’s whim set you on it.

“Wick will one day become a tier seven being and still trembles in fear for the time they spent within him. Many whose lives he only briefly touched were sent reeling to heights beyond their wildest imagination. For all your similarities, you wear your power boldly in challenge.

“Don’t pay attention to the sleight of hand. Behind the occasional act of pride or arrogance, he remains humble and conceals all but what must be shown. The feelings he reveals to his loved ones are genuine and sincere but that is where you must cease to see him at face value. Those who forget that will pay the price if they force him to strip away the surface.”

He nodded at her.

And as they strolled into realms beyond, he said, “Putting all the rest of our decisions behind us, couldn’t we have found a more… fitting companion for him?”

Medea rubbed her temples. “In truth, we could and probably should have. We needed her help, though. It was her one request. I believe that she may be a… rotten woman.”

With one last look back, Duran said, “Sorry, old friend. Lily is a… special one.”

Medea sighed. “If you look past selfish motive, there might be some wisdom to her decision. Orison could never stand seeing a woman in danger anyway. And his path, it is anything but safe.”