“Chamomile?” Mursa asked, motioning at the cup in front of Micah. He lifted it to his mouth, blowing the steam off of it while the goddess took the seat across from him.
Before he could respond, the door to the room slammed open. Micah shut his eyes, averting his gaze from the roiling mass of glowing fog and vague but indescribably vast shapes that he knew would be waiting just outside the small parlor.
“There he is!” Ankros’ voice thundered out, followed shortly by heavy footsteps. “The man of the hour, here in the flesh.”
“Where is our brother?” Mursa asked, her voice pointed as she raised a single eyebrow at the big god striding into the room. “I presume Luxos is taking some steps to clean up his mistake?”
Micah reopened his eyes in time to watch the muscle bound god of night and strife as he walked across the room and pulled out another chair, scraping it across the floor. Mursa glared ineffectually at him, her gaze literally sending sparks skittering across the room.
“Yes,” Ankros answered cheerfully, plopping himself down into the chair. “It was as you thought, we weren’t able to stop the Third Prince from crossing into the timestream. Luxos is off blasting away at it. With any luck he’ll be able to do some damage before it manages to escape into Karell.”
“Good,” Mursa replied sternly. “His games have put the entire project at risk. Unless he can weaken the Third Prince significantly, Micah is as good as dead.”
“Wait.” Micah stirred, butting into the conversation for the first time. “Can someone please explain what’s going on? As the Micah in question I’d vastly prefer an option that involves me not being dead.”
“Nah,” Ankros addressed Mursa, functionally ignoring Micah’s outburst. “You might be the goddess of the moon and knowledge, but you sure seem prone to underestimating your representative over there.”
The big god nodded in Micah’s direction, tossing him a cheerful wink.
“Micah’s been growing by leaps and bounds,” Ankros continued helpfully. “With proper direction and motivation, there’s no upper limit on what he can do.”
The door to the cozy, wood paneled room slammed open a second time. Micah averted his gaze again, but not before he got a glimpse of a vague and titanic something slithering through the endless mists. Distantly, he felt more than heard an incessant buzzing sound that made his molars ache.
“Tone it down Luxos,” Mursa snapped. “You’re making our guest uncomfortable, and I’m still not exactly thrilled with your role in this entire debacle.”
“Fine,” a melodic male voice responded crankily. The hum stopped and Micah opened his eyes as the impossibly handsome god of light and order gently pulled out a chair across from him and took a seat.
“I don’t suppose you managed to drive our invader off?” Mursa asked, generating a cup of tea for herself with a wave of her hand. “Ankros said you were in the middle of a fight with it when Micah arrived.”
“A fight?” Luxos snorted. “An ambush or pursuit might be better terminology. Once it followed your toy outside the flow of time Ankros and I pounced upon it. We managed to strip the Third Prince of a sizable portion of its power before it escaped back into Karell. I could have pursued it further, but-”
“Yes, yes,” Mursa cut him off, taking a sip from her cup. “Your mere presence would tear the fabric of reality apart at the seams. We are all aware of our creation’s limitations.”
“Actually,” Micah raised his hand, trying to draw the quarreling deities’ attention. “I don’t. I actually have very little idea about what’s going on other than that the creature possessing Baron Hurden can apparently break through time itself.”
“Luxos was a dick and almost ruined things for everyone,” Ankros supplied helpfully, leaning back in his chair with a broad grin on his face.
“Excuse me for taking a page from your book,” Luxos snapped back, glaring crossly at his brother. “I thought you of all entities would understand that it is sometimes necessary to introduce a predator into an ecosystem in order to spur development. Seriously, after creating dungeons all across the face of Karell and forcing mortals to fight in them lest they trigger some sort of disaster-”
“Enough!” Mursa snapped, the room’s fireplace flaring as her eyes flashed silver. “I drew Micah here to discuss his future and the threats that face Karell. Not to listen to the three of us bicker.”
“Mistakes were made,” she continued, glaring at Luxos. The other god avoided her gaze, but remained largely unapologetic. “But right now the question isn’t ‘how we got here.’ It’s ‘how do we fix this situation.’ We can worry about blame and what could have been once we’ve addressed the imminent threat.”
“And what is the imminent threat?” Micah asked, taking a sip of his tea. Unsurprisingly, it was amongst the best he’d ever tasted. One of the many perks of godhood.
“A little over a year ago, our dear brother Luxos came to Baron Hurden in a dream.” Mursa locked eyes with Micah, her pleasant, almost musical voice washing over him. “By that point the Baron had discovered your responsibility in his son’s death. The poor man had all but gone mad with grief and rage, but with you and your family leaving Pereston, he had no way to vent it.”
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“Luxos gave him a way,” the goddess sighed, closing her eyes as she shook her head gently. “He revealed the location of Karin Dakkora’s lost tower and promised the man enough power to destroy you.”
“Wait,” Micah interrupted with a frown, glancing from the goddess of the moon to the god of the sun. “This entire affair started out as a botched hit on me?”
“In my defense,” Luxos replied, gaze studiously focused on the upper right corner of the room, “your mere existence is both a hindrance and an annoyance to me. Put succinctly, your death would improve my mood significantly.”
“Well,” Micah rolled his eyes at the sulking god. “It would ruin my week, so I would be grateful if you could try to avoid that sort of thing in the future.”
“Honestly,” Ankros rumbled. “I’d prefer no major actions in the future brother. At least until we can sort out what’s happening with the invader. I’m not as severe as Mursa about it, but your tendency to flip the table when you’re losing a game is well documented. Given the amount of time and energy the pantheon invested into Karell, I would like to publicly state my opposition to your fits of pique.”
“If we could cut the chatter,” Mursa’s voice silenced the room while Luxos fumed quietly.
“Good,” she continued once everyone’s attention returned to her. “Baron Hurden found Dakkora’s tower, and in it the fruits of her decades of research. Artifacts capable of sundering mountains and ritual magic so risky that Karin herself didn’t dare to cast the spells were at his fingertips.”
“I thought Dakkora was killed in her tower?” Micah asked, forehead cinched into a frown as he tried to wrack his memory for stories regarding the fabled dark wizard. “Didn’t a joint force composed of every god’s chosen destroy her and all of her work? I seem to recall polemics in the official records about the monks that disposed of her projects being sworn to silence upon pain of death lest her ‘blasphemous experiments’ be repeated.”
“Joint force?” Ankros snorted. “More like Luxos and a handful of his supporters flipping the table because Dakkora was about to ascend. Just like this time.”
“A fair question Micah,” Mursa responded grudgingly, glaring at Ankros for his interruption. “Karin Dakkora had two towers. One from which she sought to extend her power and carve out a portion of Karell where Luxos could not reach her. That was the tower where she marshalled her armies of daemons and constructs and fought the final battle against my brother’s church.”
“The second and more important tower,” she continued, a faint twinkle in her eye, “was buried after her defeat by the collective will of the pantheon. That tower was where she performed her experiments and created items of immense power. The library in the research tower contained the fruits decades of painstaking, albeit ethically challenged, research. Over my objections, we summoned an earthquake and sealed it away from mortal eyes that, allegedly, ‘weren’t prepared for the secrets contained therein.”
“Allegedly?” Ankros interrupted once again. “Within one year of finding the tower, a mortal tried to perform a ritual to bind a prince of Elsewhere. Of course it didn’t work. That’s a task at the limits of our collective abilities. Instead, the fool cracked a hole in the reality between Karell and Elsewhere and invited the prince in. Now the damn thing is running free, ripping souls out of mortals and making a general menace of itself.”
“I’m sure that a properly trained and prepared ritualist could have managed the spell,” Mursa huffed. “Luxos just set us all up for failure by sending in a hamfisted brute. With the proper spellcasting environment and-”
The goddess caught herself. She blew out a deep breath, sending her halo of silver hair loathing up into the air.
Finally, once she had composed herself, Mursa continued with a wan smile. “None of that matters now.”
“The only important factor is that the Third Prince is here, and we can’t intervene to remove it without tearing Karell itself.” She slumped back into her chair, summoning her teacup to hand with a flick of her wrist.
“What does that mean for me?” Micah asked carefully. “If the Third Prince was the being I fought while trying to crash Baron Hurden’s Sky Fortress, I’m not sure I have a credible shot to fight it. Even if we don’t take its army of daemons into account, I’ll eat my hat if that thing was under level one hundred.”
“You heard the manling,” Luxos shrugged, finally returning his attention to the conversation. “Karell is doomed. Now maybe the two of you will consider my request to collapse the planet around the invader so that we can take advantage of the energy release from its destruction to kill the Third Prince once and for all.”
Micah whipped his head around. The god of the sun graced him with a gloating smirk as he crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.
“None of that,” Ankros cut in, waving a hand dismissively. “The Third Prince is on Karell, but here its weakened connection to Elsewhere is weakened. Obviously it would annihilate Micah if he challenged it at full power, but unless it wants to slink home in disgust it will need to tie itself to an anchor.”
“True,” Mursa agreed. “It will need an anchor and that means a mortal body. More importantly, depending upon the level of the body it will only be able to exert a portion of its power. In the original timeline, it had a year to prepare and all of Dakorra’s artifacts in hand before Micah fought it. Although his struggle was admirable, he was as doomed as a mouse challenging a wolf.”
“What do I do then?” Micah asked, finishing the last of his tea. “Find Baron Hurden and kill him before he can summon the damn thing? Track it down before it can level up enough to be a threat?”
“Unfortunately,” Mursa sighed. “Matters are out of Baron Hurden’s hands. Like you, the Third Prince is unstuck from time. The minute you return to Karell it will be free to work its will.”
“If you could find and defeat the prince before it acquires a host.” She shrugged helplessly. “That would obviously be ideal, but I am pessimistic on your chances. When untethered from an anchor, it can make itself immaterial. You will be able to sense it with your arcana skill, but for any other mortal, it may as well be a ghost.”
“Of course,” Ankros cut in, “that means you can’t kill it in a proper manner either. It doesn’t even have the good manners to die when you cut it’s anchor in half with an axe. Instead you’ll need to set up some sort of ritual. Make sure the stars are aligned with your primal energy flow and all that crap to prevent it from escaping into another body.”
“The three of you have a plan right?” Micah asked hopefully. “Because this doesn’t seem like the sort of thing I’ll be able to tackle without a plan.”
“Sure,” Ankros responded cheerily. “Mursa has already recorded the location of Karin Dakkora’s research tower in that book of yours that jots everything down. If you can find it and make your way through her traps and defenses, you’ll be able to find the items, research and spells you need to have a fighting chance against the Third Prince.”
“One thing,” Mursa cut in sternly. “The Third Prince has already demonstrated that it can follow you through time. The good news is that it was only summoned recently. It won’t have any knowledge of events for the first three to four years after you return to Karell.”
“The bad news,” she finished, staring Micah dead in the eyes. “The bad news is that you only get one shot at this. If you go back, it goes back and that will only make it more knowledgeable, stronger. No second chances.”