ROD - Chapter 141 (Patreon)

Chapter One-Hundred-Forty-One – Bloom – Part One

Breathe… or you’ll pass out.

-UWO Sergeant Major Rollins-

My lungs drag in air as I land softly on the ground. I’m disoriented as I try to stand. A warm breeze brushes against me as my eyes adjust to the light. I’m in a field of some kind. Flowers stretch endlessly to the horizon. It’s like a sea of colors, ones that I normally wouldn’t see on Earth. Neon flowers that glow with bioluminescence.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I turn and see Renavi laying on her stomach, riding a cloud with her feet bobbing behind her. She moves her arms to rest on her hands as she smiles at me.

“Yes… but where are we?”

“One of my worlds, do you like it?”

I nod, then remembering just moments ago she killed Emerthul and… my head lowers as I feel truly alone.

Sage and Terra... they’re gone.

Sadness creeps up into my chest and strangles my heart. I have no hope of reversing time with Emerthul dead. My legs feel heavy as I kneel in the grass. Where did I go wrong?

“Do you like it?” she repeats softly, moving her cloud closer to me.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

I don’t look at her as I feel the flame of hope dying inside of me, “Why?”

“Curiosity.”

“No, I meant why did you kill him and my friends?”

“Friends?”

“Sage and Terra, the admins with me.”

“The Arch Admins?”

I nod.

“Well, my plan wouldn’t have worked if there were witnesses. They said I could deal with it as I saw fit.”

I look up at her slowly, “Who?”

“I think you know who, or in some people’s opinion, what.”

“The Grand One?”

She winks, touching flower petals with her hand as she glides toward me, “You considered those admins your friends?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a strange sentiment for a mortal.”

“Why?”

“Most that meet them don’t like them. They oversee the games after all. Most gods don’t even like admins.”

I mull what she said for a moment, “It’s not like they chose it. We mortals have more in common with the admins then we do with the gods.”

She looks at me strangely, “You really are a strange one.”

“Can you bring back my friends?”

“All of them or just the admins?” she asks gently as she lowers her cloud to smell one of the flowers.

“All of them… could you do that?”

She shrugs, “I was thinking about it.”

The warm breeze strikes me softly as I look at her, the dance of colors in her hair and eyes is like the weave of light across the field of flowers. She doesn’t seem malicious, yet I saw her snuff out hundreds of thousands of lives in an instant. For what feels like a whim… she’s dangerous. More so than anyone I’ve met. She read the runes I crafted and realized how to manipulate them to kill Emerthul. I don’t understand her motivations.

“Why would you help me?”

She shifts to lie on her back as she holds a petal above her, “You seem so mopey now. Even the mana seems to be depressed in your presence. So, I thought if I brought back your friends, you might change your attitude again.”

I blink at her, “You’re just going to reverse time, no questions asked?”

She laughs, turning an eye toward me, “Well I do have questions, I always have questions. Truthfully though, they asked me to deal with your situation.” She shifts again, lying back on her stomach, “See apparently, Mr. Troublemaker, you signed something improperly.”

“What?” I lean against the grass and feel it in my hands, it’s strange to feel it in this new body. Everything feels slightly off, like I didn’t quite get it right.

“According to the Grand One, when Mythren redid your Respec tutorial you were yet again not given a proper one.” She shrugs, moving the strands of hair in her eyes behind her ears.

“I know, I had to sign a waver and… oh.” Thinking back, when I signed it, I did so as I had always done, writing no and pretending it was my initials. “Did that… did that actually work?”

She smiles, “See, normally no one would care about that. They’d just vaporize you and say next in line step forward. But, the Grand One told me that I had the expressed permission to decide how to handle it.”

“Why though, how did you even get involved?”

She smiles, baring sharpened canines, “They told me you were an anomaly, and I was bored.”

“Bored… seriously?”

She shrugs, “I’ve done stranger things to pass the time.”

“Like?”

She tilts her head at me, a strange look grows on her face, “You’re like me… curious for the sake of curiosity aren’t you?”

I ponder it for a moment, then nod.

“Well, that’s…” she pauses, looking in the distance, a frown moves across her face as a wave of deep blue flutters in her hair and eyes, “That was quick, I’ll slow time so we can talk a little longer.”

“What was quick?”

“The Sarlenac quadrant’s cosmos is fracturing. It happens when high gods start fighting too seriously.” A devious grin finds her lips, “I guess my little war plan worked.”

“Sarlenac quadrant’s cosmos, I don’t understand…”

She tilts her head, “Can you keep a secret?”

“Sometimes…”

She laughs heartily, “I’m the same, sometimes it’s just too tempting to tell everyone.”

“So, what is the Sarlenac quadrant?”

“It’s a portion within a portion, a cosmos within a cosmos, well, technically it isn’t, but it is… Hmm, how to explain it… probably better to show you,” the cloud disperses and she lands on the ground. Extending a hand to me, “Come, I will show you.”

Reality warps suddenly as I take her hand. Endless darkness swallows my vision until I hear her snap her fingers. Light blooms all around us. Countless galaxies swirl across my vision.

“Your home is here,” she points to a galaxy I recognize from school, the Milky Way Galaxy. She pinches her fingers together and zooms out, then draws a circle around more galaxies, “These are all in the Sarlenac quadrant, which is where we,” she rolls her eyes and air quotes, “high gods reign.” She zooms out further and circles more, “Combined with the other three quadrants it becomes the Ora cluster.”

“What the fuck…” I whisper, blinking at the information, “So, what about the other quadrants, do they have their own high gods?”

She nods, “And their own version of the games. Each quadrant is a bit different though. Not sure how different, we aren’t exactly allowed to traverse between quadrants. Our authority ends at the edge of our domain after all.”

My mind feels like it’s exploding as she starts spouting off facts rapid fire, leaving me in a daze. Each thing she says brings us somewhere else. I’m almost certain that I’m not supposed to know any of this.

***

“Sometimes stray gods do defect over, usually they lose a lot of juice though… sorry, I was on a tangent again. Em, what else should you probably not know, hmm.”

Falling out of the daze a single question forms, “What is the point of all of this?”

“The point?”

“During one of your tangents you said the System is compartmentalized between quadrants and then again between clusters. How many are there? Why is the System here? What’s the point? What happens if a world wins?”

Cracks begin forming on the edge of the space we are in, she sighs, “Almost out of time. The shortened version is… we don’t really know. We’ve never advanced as a quadrant past the initial phase.”

“So… you’re in the dark too?”

She nods, “Basically, which is pretty boring.”

“What the fuck is wrong with the universe…”

“I ask myself that every day, want to know the answer I find?”

“It’s not exciting enough…” I breathe.

“You really do get me,” she smiles.

“So, if my world wins, what happens after?”

She looks at the deepening cracks, “We can discuss that later, right now, we need to thread a proverbial needle.”

“When can we discuss it later?”

Her eyes sparkle, “Already missing me?” her hand grasps mine as she pulls me close, “This concludes your Respec On Death tutorial.” She winks, “Please make sure to leave me a rating.”

“There’s ratings?”

She chuckles, “I mean, I can add it in if you want?”

I blink at her, “If reality is crumbling, shouldn’t you start reversing time?”

She leans her head back, “Bit bossy for a mortal… though I do kind of enjoy it… could make for an interesting dynamic.” Runes sprout from thin air all around us, “Might be fun…” her eyes widen as she turns to look at me.

“What?”

“I’ve had a wonderous idea… they probably wouldn’t like it… doesn’t really matter what they all think though. Life’s supposed to be fun, right?”

She talks to herself in a circle for a few more moments as the cracks begin to widen around us.

“It would be rude for me to not talk to you again… maybe I should do it… hmm the consequences though.”

“Do what?” I point at the cracks, “Shouldn’t something be done about that?”

“Scared to die?” she asks, looking at me curiously, “Seems odd, given that you’re dead, sort of.”

“I don’t want to die before I reset time and save my loved ones.”

“So sweet… I think I have to do it now… I’d regret it if I didn’t… Right?”

Giving her a confused expression, “Regret what?”

She smiles deeper, her sharpened canines glint in the starlight, “It’s time, try to relax and enjoy the show.”

I blink at her.

A black text box appears in my vision.

[ Warden of Time activated ]

[ Parsing… Success ]

[ Divine timeline reset request received… Originator… The Grand One ]

[ Justification… destabilized reality within a quadrant due to divine quarreling… ]

[ Submitting justification… Success ]

[ Verdict… Approved ]

[ Desyncing time flow from universal divine timeline… Success ]

A strange buzzing floods the air. What the fuck does this mean? I remember getting the Warden of Time thing from the custom system… Does it let me see when someone alters time? What else can it do?

[ Identifying stable revert point… Success ]

[ Executing protocol… Success ]

[ Beginning… ]

The cracks howl as energy explodes all around us, darkness finds my eyes for a moment and then a strange and eerily familiar feeling strikes a chord in my reality. Time begins to crawl backward just like when Ulana brought me back after everyone died the first time. It ebbs around us, pulsing back.

“Stay relaxed, our moment has not come yet,” Renavi says as time pulls her backward too. Echoes of power resonate off her body as she doesn’t quite hit the mark of where she was previously, “Wasn’t I holding my hand like that?” she sighs as she relaxes and the echoes lessen, “I’ll find you again when it’s time… no pun intended.”

Another pulse pulls my focus back. We’re in the courtroom from earlier, Emerthul is alive again, shrinking back into his normal size.

Time reverses to the beginning of the trial, then back into the void where I saw Sage before it started. It pulses again and I’m standing inside of Emerthul’s domain just before I died. Ulana and Sera are fighting him.

[ Stable revert point reached… Success ]

Time’s going to restart here? I can’t even speak as I’m frozen in it. Everyone else died before this though… Strange flickers of light pulse through reality.

[ Resyncing time back to universal cosmic timeline… Succ… Error… Error… ]

[ Control of local quadrant time ownership changing… Success ]

[ New operator… Renavi Goddess of the Skies ]

[ Alternative power source identified… Making exception… Success ]

[ Power source… Emerthul God of Darkness ]

She’s using him as a battery… nice. Reality tremors and groans as it begins shifting backward.

[ Submitting new revert point… When User Novak, Jimmy received skill Respec On Death… ]

[ Identifying point… Success ]

Wait… if she goes back that far then I’ll be the only one that remembers. They’ll be alive though…

I’ll be alone again… the only one who remembers everything. Why couldn’t she just go back to right after Azeroc died or something.

[ Beginning… ]