Chapter 246, 1/2

Chapter 246, 1/2

“You ready?” Erick asked.

Solomon said, “Yes.”

Lorizal Ex simply nodded.

Actually getting everything together for the summoning of Avandrasolaro had taken a lot longer than a day, for while the Church of Peace was against war and force, it was very much filled with people who liked to talk, and talk, and talk. Which was great for peace! In the absence of force, communication and convincing was king. The only problem with that was that some people used their words like weapons, and they did not know when to stop.

Erick had finally had to step in and simply declare what was going to happen.

And now they were here, two days later than expected. Erick didn’t mind the delay, for his ‘Universal Mapping’ the other day was being discussed in every single hall of power that knew about it. Which had been everyone, as of an hour ago. It hadn’t started that way. Rozeta had told Kromolok and it was rather quiet down in the Geodes for a day, but then news got around from Ar’Cosmos and Fairy because Fairy Moon got a bug up her ass about throwing the biggest, bestest party she could. That party was still going on right now, and it probably would be going on for the foreseeable future. All the world was warned to stay away from that party, for it was like a tidal surge leading into a whirlpool; easily pulling and holding onto everyone who attended it, even if you were prepared for it.

Erick would probably have to intervene in that party later, but not right now. For now, in every kingdom, and in every Geode, and in more than a few adventurer beer halls, they were talking about the size of the universe. ‘Erick’s Map’.

And now Erick was summoning angels from the Dark. Or at least he would in a moment.

One last check.

They stood before the Black Gate, where Dark Dreams swam beyond in a riot of black color. Everything looked normal there.

Erick’s clothes were white and black with silver accents. Immaculate, and made by real professionals. Special made for the occasion, too. Guile had asked what Erick would be wearing, and when Erick showed him, the little fox declared that Erick was not doing nearly enough. ‘You’re summoning a demigod who ruled over trillions of people for eons. Dress better.’ And so Erick had.

Solomon had on a similar cut as Erick’s clothes, but slightly lesser, to denote his station as lesser in this arena, but not too much lesser. Solomon was to be Avandrasolaro’s main human contact, or at least one of the larger archmage/nascent-Wizard forces whom Avandrasolaro would be interfacing with in order to end the Forever War. Hopefully the angel would be okay with that.

No one had any idea what would actually happen when they brought Avandrasolaro back.

Everyone from Koyabez to Rozeta to Kirginatharp to Erick’s own people in House Benevolence all had various ideas. Most of them were optimistic. They all said that Avandrasolaro would have an adjustment period toward life on Veird, but that he should be able to adjust well.

Erick stood in front of the Black Gate. Solomon stood on his right.

Lorizal, an all-red incani and with her horns shaved, stood on Erick’s left, wearing high priestess robes that were rather ancient by modern standards. They looked almost spun from tissue paper, almost translucent and yet well made. They showed off the simple wrap around her chest and a simple loincloth underneath. Which was the idea. The whole dress was like origami, with writing in thin silver letters all across the whole piece. Her headdress was a round cap also made of see-through cloth, with small strips of prayers rising up from the rim, each of them calling for peace in trying times, and for words over warriors.

It would have been a scandalous outfit in most arenas of this modern age, but Koyabez only ever wore a small loincloth anyway to show off that he held no weapons. It sort of made sense for Lorizal to wear something similar. At least Lorizal’s outfit was warmer than it looked; Erick had asked her just that, when they had gathered for this and she was shaking a little. That shaking was nerves.

It wasn’t every day one met a demigod angel, who might actually help them end both the Quiet War and Forever War for all time.

Erick looked to Lorizal again; she hadn’t actually said she was ready, and she still looked nervous.

Lorizal breathed deep, then she glanced toward Erick. “I am ready to welcome him to Veird. Let us proceed, Good Wizard Flatt.”

At that, Erick nodded. He spared one more glance toward the three Paladins of Peace which had journeyed with Lorizal to this place of Welcoming Dark. They were all dressed in simple robes, in the more modern style, each of them holding Silver-Star-shaped shields on their backs; round shields with a few small points on the edges. At his glance, they all stood even more at attention.

The girls were far down the way, along with a bunch of other observers who simply had to be here. The girls were close enough to intervene with the Black Gate and what was beyond, if necessary, but everyone hoped the ancient angel would come through without any prodding or war. Avandrasolaro was most certainly a Wizard, but, like Guile, they wouldn’t have that capability there in the Dark.

Probably.

Good.

The stage was set.

Erick stopped delaying.

He spoke, “We seek Avandrasolaro, at the height of his kingly power. Peace demands a new true hero; there’s a Forever War to scour.”

Darkness and black dreams flowed away from a scene beyond the Black Gate, revealing a grand hall, in a cross pattern, filled with light and people.

The ceiling beyond was a kilometer up, vanishing in light and vaulted cathedral architecture, while long white walls, like columns, descended to the white stone floor in the far distance, in every distance. A silver carpet lay down the center of the grand king’s hall, leading toward a staircase that led up a dais set in the back of the hall. People lined the hall, and the carpet, waiting in line to approach the end of the hall, to speak to the man up there who was not a simple man at all. There was a silver throne upon that dais, but it was hard to tell exactly what Erick was looking at, for Avandrasolaro was maybe half a kilometer away, a demigod, and making minuscule all other observations.

The angel was brown-skinned, shirtless, muscular, and wearing the same sort of loincloth that Koyabez sported, but he looked like an actual warrior, and he had clearly-visible weapons ‘upon’ him, or at least near him. Like all angels, Avandrasolaro was soul-attached to weapons that hovered near him. And he had a lot. Erick wasn’t sure what was going on with the man’s throne, but it looked like a simple silver stool; something to sit upon that didn’t block his backside, where all his tools of war hovered all around him.

Weapons in every shape and style were like resting wings, halfway laying down on the dais and halfway hovering in the air all around Avandrasolaro. Spears and swords, maces and daggers, hiltless katana-like tools of war, scythes of various size and shape, all of them silver and sharp as they could be. Even the blunt weapons had edges to them.

A moment passed, and Erick saw the greatest danger was not happening; nothing would be attacking toward the gate, for no one on that side could see the gate, even though there had to be powerful people among that crowd. Because of that—

Erick instantly decided, “We will postpone initial action and wait for some of the people to clear out.”

The Black Gate had only been open for a half minute so far, and the timer above the portal read all 9s. They could wait and not lose anything.

Solomon said, “I think they’re all kings and queens of their own in that line.”

Erick felt the same way. He was already listening to the happenings on the other side.

Far ahead, at the front of the line, just beyond the stairs to the dais, a dwarvish woman with a very large updo continued, her voice filling the hall, “—And so our attempts at persuading the orcs to stick to their pact-agreed lands has failed, and we are facing a horde march this coming Brightening, or sooner. All of this could have been avoided if your Paladins would have done their jobs, and not fallen in love with the orcs they were supposed to defend us from, thus allowing their trespasses of war preparations to go unnoticed for this long. Therefore, we ask for dispensation to force the issue in the favor of your humble subjects; for the orcs to be forcibly relocated, or culled back to manageable size, or for whatever other solution you might have, our King Avandrasolaro.”

She bowed, taking a knee to await her king’s judgment.

Avandrasolaro seemed to consider her words, then he said, “I do not lightly grant paladinship to believers, so while the nature of your statement is likely correct, I feel the facts have been misconstrued.”

“On my very soul, the facts are as factual as I am capable of knowing.”

“Very well.” Avandrasolaro said, “I judge for relocation. If, in the pursuit of this solution, I find out something untoward, then parts of your population will be relocated instead. Now. Are you sure you are not misrepresenting key facts?”

The woman strongly said, “I wish it would not have come to this, but it has. On my soul, I am telling the truth of my lands, as I know them to be true.”

Avandrasolaro said, “Dismissed.”

The dwarven woman stood and walked toward the left, looking relieved, but not weak. One couldn’t look weak in front of other sovereigns, after all. A lesser angel with bindings for clothes and swords floating at her back guided the dwarven woman toward a door, removing her from the proceedings.

And then a tall man who seemed elven stepped to the speaker’s spot before Avandrasolaro’s dais.

Avandrasolaro stared the man down, and said, “State the full breadth of your grievance, Clan Rivermaw, and keep it short.”

The man from Rivermaw began, “In the Winter of two and a half years ago, the demons attacked the crackside lands of Rivermaw. We fought them back, as was our right to defend ourselves, but due to the intervention of Bisection Paladins briefly fighting on the sides of the demons and us killing three of those Paladins, we were censured for a 25% increase in tithe, from 3% to 28%, and you personally took the head of my general and gifted it to the demons. I am here to state, once again, that we did not seek punitive war against the demons in retaliation for their crimes against us, and thus you had no right to censure us as you did.” With well-restrained anger, the man said, “Last time I was here I was unable to provide adequate proof that their whole war was a false flag operation designed to discredit our ability and right to defend ourselves.

“But I have proof now.

“After 2 years and because of the demon’s overreach in their lust for power and land, through mercantile means that most would deem unethical in all ways and which cross the line into unlawful in multiple areas, I can lay out their entire false flag operation, and prove that in their attack, and in our defense of that attack, that what they actually desired was to undermine the entire Rivermaw area, to make us ripe for picking. Which they have done. In 2 more years, if Law and Good does not prevail here and now, we will have to sell our sovereignty back to Bisection control, and the demons will purchase it.”

Erick had thought that perhaps he could ignore what the man had been asking for, that he could make plans with everyone on this side. But he ended up listening to the Rivermaw’s man's entire spiel. It was a compelling case, for Erick had needed to work out situations just like it. Also, it seemed the Old Demons had passed down their culture of ‘getting people into debt in order to control them’ had deep roots. The incani had kept this culture going to this day, though without Contract Magic it wasn’t nearly as powerful as it could have been.

Erick was glad Contract Magic did not exist; it was one of Rozeta’s best decisions.

Anyway. Erick knew how he would resolve the situation. He wondered if Avandrasolaro would do the same. First would come the full telling of truths, though. This guy would need to actually back up his claims.

Avandrasolaro frowned a little at the elf, then he waved a hand and multiple [Gate]s opened up in a full arc across the speaker’s portion of the audience, each of them looking from this angle like soft, white-gold circles of mist. The entrance to the other sides of those [Gate]s were pointed toward Avandrasolaro, of course. “Attend to me, my lawyers, the prosecution from Rivermaw, and the defense from the demonic lands of Deadfield.”

People appeared, and also those who were not people at all, but demons. Three demons. They were giants among men, both colored and shaped like gore and offal, but wearing suits or dresses; monsters deciding to look like people for a while, for as long as it served their purposes. Tentacles and eyes and wings of flame, or skin, or bone. They appeared completely calm, which was in great contrast to the others who had come out of different portals.

The people from Rivermaw strode forward, each of them carrying suitcases and other tools of the lawyer profession. They looked like they had just woken up, which might have happened. A lot of the people in the line of sovereigns looked half-asleep, as though they had been in the line for a long time. Seeing Avandrasolaro open [Gate]s and call for a trial didn’t even wake them up much. If there were breaks for full trials then it was a surprise that any of them were as upright as they were. Maybe these trials didn’t actually take much time? Erick didn’t know.

A few people in line were actively waking, though, as there was a trial going on now, so maybe this didn’t happen too often.

Avandrasolaro’s wings made of weapons slightly raised from the ground, as the angel himself stared impassively at the arrangement before him. The portals all closed. And then he said, “My lawyers will provide you with one hour to deliberate this concern, to attempt to achieve reconciliation before I get involved. If you forgo this reconciliation, then I will be involved for as long as it takes me to make a decision. Lawyers.”

Erick had ignored the three angels with wings made of daggers who had stepped out of a different portal, but now he focused on them. All three were dressed in simple clothes; bindings for the two women, and loincloths for all three.

The male lawyer clapped his hands—

A bubble enveloped the speaker’s space, completely occluding the proceedings, but Erick and many other sovereigns watched intently. It was a time bubble, for sure, and the people inside were already turning into blurs. They didn’t move back and forth much at all, except for the lawyers, but everyone did all gesticulate and make small movements here and there. That was enough to make viewing them unintelligible, not to mention they were half a kilometer away—

Suddenly, the bubble popped, and everyone was back in their starting places.

The demons seemed less happy than before, though emotions were kinda hard to tell with them.

The people from Rivermaw seemed reserved, and vengeful.

The male lawyer said, “Reconciliation is not possible. The evidence produced by Rivermaw meets basic requirements for a true trial. It is in this court’s opinion that the Deadfield return the property in question to Rivermaw, and return to your borders. It is our opinion to remove the tithe against Rivermaw, and install Paladins of the Bisection to oversee a return to peaceful times. Certain demons must also be brought to justice, but that is outside of the recommendation of this lower court.” He asked the litigants. “Please state for the record that you wish to accept this declaration of reconciliation, or continue to true trial. Rivermaw?”

Rivermaw answered, “We wish for a full trial.”

“Deadfield?”

The demon made of tentacles and eyes, stuffed in a suit, said, “We wish to go to full trial and for these aggressive Rivermaw elves to be put down for the good of us—”

“Enough of that.” Avandrasolaro’s wings lifted up a bit more, almost threateningly. “We go to full trial.”

The male lawyer clapped his hands again—

The bubble of time was much larger this time, enveloping the whole speaker area and the throne—

The bubble collapsed.

All three demons were dead, reduced to smears upon the ground.

The Rivermaw elves were relieved, two of them crying tears of joy.

Avandrasolaro proclaimed, “The demons of Deadfield have massively overstepped the bounds of their individual allotments and the Bisection Pact itself, and worse, they have used deceit and my own Paladins to sow chaos and destruction among the people.” Avandrasolaro opened up ten thousand small portals all around his throne. “I now decree Deadfield to be in Grand Violation.”

And then his wings went outward, through the portals.

Screaming and death followed.

In less than a minute his wings came back layered with blood and guts. A simple flick cast that mess to the ground, though his wings remained slightly red. The mess was not a mess for long. The dead demons from before were already evaporating off of the ground, through some sort of cleaning magic, but when Avandrasolaro scattered so much more blood that cleaning magic really took off. Within moments, his wings of weapons were clean, and so was the floor. Even the demons’ clothes had vanished into the manasphere.

Avandrasolaro proclaimed, “Justice is done. Every demon of Deadfield who surpassed 75% guilt to my eyes is slain. Those below 75% have suffered wounds that they will survive. 15% of Deadfield is now dead.”

Rivermaw’s people looked relieved, but also terrified. Kinda hard to see from this angle.

Avandrasolaro said, “The tithes against Rivermaw are ended. You will have assistance to rebuild, but you have failed to be good neighbors, so you will provide the demons with assistance to rebuild. You will build bridges, not war. Attack the demons who remain and you will be removed from power next. You will be under probation for the next 5 years, as will the demons of Deadfield. Your case is over.”

The elves of Rivermaw bowed.

The lawyers guided the elves away, toward the left.

Everyone let those words hang.

And Erick thought. Four silent seconds later, he said, “I think I know how to handle this, but I need to know what Avandrasolaro’s initial reasons were for becoming the man he became. Guile?”

The blonde fox sat tall on his stool, his tails flicking out and then going lazy, as he began, “Avandrasolaro was not born the prince of a kingdom that spanned 500 worlds. He made himself into that sort of person. At first, he was born a simple angel, on the front of the Forever War, on a plane made of Glass and Lightning and all the Elements in between. He was fodder to hold back the tide for as long as he could, as the plane he was born to was destined to be overrun by demons within a century. But he survived. Time and time again, he survived by killing those who needed killing, and making allies along the way.

“At four thousand years old, he found me, upon a world of Metal and Water and Exalted, passing among the forgemasters of some mid-sized city, trying to find someone worthy of raising to power. Avandrasolaro turned out to be that person. He had ruined his weapons and he needed more and he showed promise, and so I moved into his forge and whispered power into his dreams, guiding his insights into Metal and Air.

“When he crafted a true artifact, I revealed myself, and we entered into a Contract.

“By the time I met him, Avandrasolaro wanted nothing to do with the Forever War, but the Forever War was not done with him. You don’t get to be a 4,000 year old angel without coming into your own sort of true power, with a lot of enemies on the other side wanting you dead.

“To make an incredibly long story short, I stayed with Avandrasolaro for a while, raising him up to true power, at the cost of him supplying me with all the demons I wanted to eat. It was an enemy on the other side who turned out to be not so bad which caused Avandrasolaro to try for peace. I wanted to eat that enemy, though. And so our relationship soured. I ate his arm, and then left him to his own devices.

“Avandrasolaro went on to found the Bisection several hundred years later.” Guile said, “And that’s as much as I should tell you of his past. He is a good man, to a fault. He is also a violent man whenever he needs to be.”

After a moment, Erick said, “Okay. Then I’m confident that we’re making the right decision in bringing him back.”

Erick laid out the idea.

After some discussion, Solomon was on board, and Guile gave all the suggestions he could. Lorizal approved, though she still wanted to observe Avandrasolaro with her people for a while longer.

Erick gazed at the crowd, counting people and estimating timeframes. “How about another 4 hours?”

Lorizal looked. She counted and estimated. “Ah? Three of Avandrasolaro’s descendants at once, at the front of the line?”

“As good a time as any.”

Guile added, “The more I think of it, the more I think these Judgment Days could last months; so yes, it is as good a time as any.”

“Which is why we’re not waiting overlong in the rescue,” Erick said.

- - - -

Avandrasolaro spread his wings and his gaze for the 578th time today, spearing through the plaintiffs in this case, killing 3 people whom he had thought were a good fit for the lands he assigned to them, but who were clearly not. His angelic forces had been overzealous in their persecution of the demonic lands, and yet the demons were allowed to defend themselves from unjust persecution, even if that defense had been over-orchestrated and punitive.

That war had cost three thousand lives and ten good generals, all of whom had been following unjust orders.

Avandrasolaro stared down at the defendants, a trio of fifth circle demons, each of them dressed in their finest bodies. They had come prepared to win, to defend themselves from unjust persecution, for if they had come prepared to lose then they would have come in their true forms, as Vile creatures of Greed and Power. They would have left these well-crafted bodies for their descendants, or in hiding holes in case they managed to get away from the Judgment Day.

No one got away from Judgment Day, though. People certainly tried, but they did not succeed.

People tried a lot on these particular days.

For the last ten hours, someone had been trying something, but Avandrasolaro could not put a weapon on what was going on in his Hall, not exactly. No one was speaking in the Grand Hall, which was proper, but... For some reason, Avandrasolaro heard voices that were not his own, or those of the judgery.

Someone —several someones— were criticizing him.

The plaintiffs always criticized him, but they at least had the decency to do it in the beer halls and courtyards of their victories or defeats, and not in line. So who the fuck was—

Something moved in a way it should not.

Avandrasolaro saw a flicker of something white in the air; there and then gone.

Someone was pulling some shit.

Avandrasolaro ignored it, like he usually ignored the smaller things. The disturbance was almost at the edge of the Grand Hall, anyway, and the next case was coming up. Soon, Avandrasolaro was listening to a rather standard corporation-overreach case involving the Queendom of Dition and the Kingdom of Lost Flowers. Avandrasolaro assigned a dissolution of the corporation and a payback of 50% of the damage done to Dition by Lost Flower’s court of nobility.

An hour and 5 more cases later, Avandrasolaro saw the white glow again, sparking in the air beside the flow of litigants. Three people in the line saw the sparks, too.

Avandrasolaro held up his hand and the litigants in front of him stopped talking. He raised his voice, weariness heavy in his words, angry that he had to say anything at all, “Whoever is doing that, remove yourself from my presence and from the seriousness of this Judgment Day. If one of you should come forward and I find out you were casting strange magics in my Hall, then you will not like the outcome of your case.”

A minor lie, for Avandrasolaro was always as just as he could be and never punitive, but it was a lie told within the scope of reasonableness and it was fine. Rarely did anyone like the outcomes of Judgment Day. This right here was a final recompense against unsure odds; people only came here if they were desperate and all the other layers of the Bisection’s Bureaucracy and problem solving centers had been unable to help.

No one spoke up.

Well that was fine, too.

Avandrasolaro told the litigants in front of him, “Continue.”

The litigants continued.

Avandrasolaro judged mostly in favor of the plaintiffs, but not completely. He executed 3 angels and 2 demons and 5 co-conspirators among the mortal races, 9 of them on the defendants’ side, and then he increased the tithes on the plaintiffs from 2% to 4% and set them with the task of rebuilding the destroyed forests that had been the location of the plantations they were fighting over. Prognostication bore out the success of that plan, but prognostication was never 100%, and the litigants left the speaker’s area looking overly-dejected. Hmm. Avandrasolaro sent a signal through a small Gate at his back, to have the others in the after-Judgment area adjust his proclamation slightly. He had missed something in the deaths he had caused. Someone might need to be revived.

The Church of Koyabez and his Holy Necromancers would do that, no problem. This happenstance was just another event that actually needed to be categorized and reported, though, so that a proper request for resurrection can happen.

Judgment Day progressed.

Before he knew it, three of Avandrasolaro’s kids were next in line. He hated Judging them, but he had to. At the same time, they felt they had to come to these Judgment Days, to ‘show off’ that they were on the right Path in life. It was like a rite of passage for them. Avandrasolaro hated it; he’d much rather they’d just visit him on a normal day and introduce themselves.

Had he ever met these three before?

... No.

Avandrasolaro hated how his children were political tools, how he didn’t know any of them that well at all, and how all his marriages had been unions of politics. When was the last time he actually loved someone? Sure, his harem was fun, and he did love them all in a deep way, but they only got together every other year. Everyone thought that he was some great lover, but all those women and men were too enamored with him to actually love him for real. How could he blame them for that, though? When all of them came from the Bisection, where Avandrasolaro had ruled for the last 20,000 years—

“Who is doing that,” Avandrasolaro said, as the air sparked again near the entrance of the Grand Hall. The litigants in front of him went silent in a little bit of terror; they didn’t know what was happening. Avandrasolaro gestured with several weapons toward the sparking area, to the right of the Hall. “That. That sparking.” He frowned, and said, “The Judgment Day is having an out-of-order event. Current litigants to the side. Whoever is disrupting these proceedings will come forth now and present themselves. All others to the side.”

Disruptions were not unheard of, but they were a drag. All the kings and queens and regents or otherwise walked to the side, away from the disturbance. Some were quicker than others, and some lingered to look at the sparks. Those lingering people rapidly moved when they were the only ones remaining behind; they didn’t want to get blamed.

“... And no one claims credit, eh?” Avandrasolaro raised a hand, and Pulled upon the sparking air—

... And nothing happened.

What should have happened was the sparks should have gotten closer, so that he could better inspect them, and whoever was casting them should have been Pulled along for the ride. It was a simple spell, too, and rather hard to counter. Impossible to counter, actually, unless he was dealing with a very powerful Wizard, and there hadn’t been one of those in his Bisection for a long time.

Avandrasolaro turned the Pulling gesture into an Annihilation, weaving Exalted power into a beam of strength that obliterated the world in a column stretching from himself to the... sparks...

Hmm.

A meters-wide length of silent, wrathful power had extended from Avandrasolaro’s front, complete in its destruction to a stretch of reality between here and the target, but when it struck the target, it struck nothing. Or rather, Nothing. The Annihilation had touched upon something stronger than itself, and became... Nothing.

What could possibly be causing this? Answers came fast enough. The Fae, the Dark, a Divinity of some sort. No other options.

Avandrasolaro calmly said to his people, “My subjects and friends. If you do not wish to be involved in whatever this is, please leave. I think it is here for me—”

Writing appeared on the empty air, words in some unknown language spilling out across a very small slice of reality, as though they were surfacing from another dimension. Which had to be exactly what was happening. Avandrasolaro didn’t understand the words themselve—

Ah. Dwarvish. That one is understandable. Archaic, but—

A lot of things happened all at once, as Avandrasolaro read the words upon the air. They read ‘We come to rescue you, Avandrasolaro, and all who desire to be rescued from the dreams of the Dark. We have room for you all, but you are all we can reach. Don’t evacuate anyone. Anyone who leaves this area is completely lost to us.’

Of the many simultaneous events happening, the first was that Avandrasolaro felt a Truth behind those words.

Secondarily, all his Gates stopped working, and each one filled with soft shadows. The clouds outside of the Grand Hall became things of Gloom. The land beyond turned indistinct.

The subjects of the Bisection read the same words that Avandrasolaro had read upon that Empty Gate, and while he was still calm and rapidly becoming not calm, a few people panicked and stepped away fast, through side doors, straight into Shadows and Gloom, like they couldn’t even see that blackness.

Prognostications failed; everything turned indistinct beyond this Time, this place, wherever this place was. Avandrasolaro had thought he had known where he was, but, no. This was not the Grand Hall. This was not a Judgment Day of his making.

He knew what this was.

He had died, and he had been living a dream.

A Dark Dream.

How had he died? He did not know—

A great wind flowed through all of reality. The scents of Exalted Order flowed away, through a hole in this time and space, directly into Darkness.

A king, another king, a strange demon priestess, and a blonde fox stood on the other side of that hole into Darkness. Each of them were prepared for diplomacy where they held all the cards and Avandrasolaro had nothing except himself to offer. But that’s what they were here for, wasn’t it. You didn’t go digging around in the Dark for little things. You also didn’t go digging around in the Dark without the Dark’s permission, or at least his ambivalence. You didn’t do dangerous rituals without a true desire...

... That fox was Guile. Avandrasolaro would recognize the ten tails of that gluttonous fae anywhere, even if his form was vastly different from usual. Could be an impostor, but probably not.

In the five seconds since the opening, not much had changed in the Grand Hall, except everything had changed forever.

Everyone in this room was dead.

Everyone in this room could live again.

If the people who had summoned Avandrasolaro wanted anything approaching reasonable, he would do whatever they wanted in order to save his people—

Oh Holy Gods, what could have happened to kill them all?—

Avandrasolaro banished that awful thought, for the Dark was already crawling upon his skin and eating away at his very self. The people beyond the Dark tried to say something, but he was not having it. “Save my people and I will do whatever you want, within reason!” He shouted at everyone who hadn’t run away. “Go through the portal! NOW.”

The lead man on the other side called back, “Come quick! Your world is collapsing!”

Avandrasolaro stood from his throne as Darkness crawled into the Grand Hall from every shadow, from every opening in every wall, from behind every column. He threw his wings wide, pieces of himself cast into the Black, to hold back the tide of Black, his power and soul disintegrating instead of his people who still didn’t know what to do. Some were quick on the uptake; primarily his children. Avandrasolaro loved them for that—

And then the people beyond the Gate sent in their own squad of warriors, and Avandrasolaro heard the Wizards beyond the Dark call them their ‘girls’. The family resemblance was noticeable. Avandrasolaro’s opinion of these high tier resurrectionists improved by a lot, both by how the girls moved as organized units, and how they held back the Dark a whole lot better than Avandrasolaro could.

People disintegrated before they reached the Gate...

But the Wizards pulled souls back together, twisting them into forms made of Nothing, or whatever it was that existed beyond this death. The alvani and dwarves and demons and elves and otherwise were not the same as they once were, as they slept there on the other side, and priests and paladins organized sleepers into groups. Physically, they looked like humans. Avandrasolaro couldn’t feel them, though, as some other reality invalidated this one.

Which was true. This reality was dead and dying even faster.

As the Darkness closed in and Avandrasolaro moved toward the Gate, his everything flaking away, his proto-divinity shredding, he could not help but wonder what lay beyond this death. Because he would survive. The Wizards seemed highly competent as they frantically turned free-floating souls into people once again. Only humans, though, which was concerning, even though there was some sort of demon over there with them...

Maybe he could fall in proper love once again, like he had when he was young.

No doubt there’d be more worlds to explore, too...