“Arson, something is wrong!”
Anastasia’s distorted words barely touched Arson’s ears. He tried to look at his watch as the mana in the air fluctuated drastically.
He could barely breathe at the speed Almarine was moving, and the destruction that raged toward them filled him with a sense of fear that he’d never felt before.
“Bloody maiden’s life fire, this is going to get hairy!”
Almarine’s laughter at their near deaths somehow comforted Arson, until he felt a wave of suppressing mana thrum to life in a dome around Almarine. The odd energy consuming Arson from head to toe.
To his horror, Arson watched as his watch's dimensional storage opened, momentarily incapable of storing anything. Almarine’s power drew any and all mana toward herself, protecting them both from the chaos of the debris exploding into the air all around them.
The screams began as body after body was dumped into the air. People yanked toward the wave of energy destroying everything in sight. Arson forced to watch as everyone he attempted to save from the destruction of Origin was vacuumed into an incinerating wall of moving energy.
Tears filled his eyes. The faces of each and every citizen burning itself into his mind. A counter of ever ticking failures increasing in his mind as the horrific scene unfolded all around him.
He couldn’t move. None of his skills or available abilities within his grasp in the moment, his body locked down by the dome Almarine summoned.
After what felt like an eternity to Arson, Almarine stopped running, dropping him into the sands at her feet. He dropped to his knees, sobbing, nothing left before him but a glassy wasteland.
Mana surrounded the once great city in a massive cloud that ringed the area in a rippling haze. Discharging energies flickered erratically throughout the cloud, like surging black lightning building within the light blue storm head..
“Woah, that could have ended badly,” said Almarine. Arson didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. Shock sealing his mouth closed in a grappling deadlock, only known by the pressures equal to depths of that at planetary cores.
His mind threatened to unravel at the thoughts that charged from the darkest sectors of his brain. Countless what-ifs, and even more regrets seizing his soul, threatening to crush the normally limitless will that thrummed throughout his heart.
The balance between his mind, body, and soul was at a level of fragility that made Arson feel as if the slightest breeze could wash him away like sand caught in a tornado.
In the corner of Arson’s vision a group of people, could be seen emerging from the edges of the cloud. A horned man with the body of a giant, holding a bow. A robed woman with burning wings and pointed ears, was being carried by a suited woman with wings that flickered with a different elemental trait that Arson couldn’t describe even if he was given a million season cycles to try.
Along with them was a purple skinned man almost as tall as the giant with the bow,. He was surrounded by runes that seemed to spawn mighty arms that clutched the air as if looking for items unseen in the space around him. Arson, in his confused mental state, took a moment, but then realized that the movements were the flailing attempts at martial forms.
It wasn’t until Osiris emerged beside them, dragging his shield and a man with countless weapons following his unconscious form, his now blackened skin lined with shifting runes that Arson knew who he was looking at.
What happened to them…
Arson's vast knowledge completely lost as to what could have transformed his masters into humanoid monsters.
“How,” said Almarine. The Cultivator began to stride over to the group, clenching her fist as if readying for battle once more.
Arson wanted to tell her to stop, but no words came from his lips. He didn’t move an inch. Not even his mana stirred at the growing rage that thrashed within him. Bits of his sanity lost to the events he’d just witnessed.
Then a voice rippled in his mind, a sense like that of drinking soothing water on a hot day, pooling across his brain as he stared off in a daze. His vision blurred and a fugue state seized his mental faculties as a goddess suppressed his senses entirely with nothing more than her voice.
“Hello, my champion.”
Hello, responded Arson in his mind, unable to speak aloud. A woman of untold beauty manifesting from thin air, lowered herself from the sky to wrap her arms around Arson, hugging the young man from behind in a loving embrace.
“There, there, child. Everything is okay now, we are finally united.”
Who are you?
“I am Freedom, I am the light within your shadow, I am your beginning, and your guide toward immortality, a goddess with only one goal in mind, and that is to take you toward your desires, my young Godling.”.”
Why, what have I done to deserve your help?
“You freed me, at great cost, but still you have done what none before you were able to do for me, so I will do for you what none before I have been able to do for you…”
“What are you going to do?
“Free your mind, body, and soul from the wants of fate, and give you what you have given me. Now rest, it is time to forget these troubling times and prepare you for what is to come.”
Finally Arson was able to move, and nodded in response as his mind drifted off to sleep. A goddess merging with his soul, a new Gestalt form born to hold his darkest traumas, and fill him with a bottomless hope for a bright future.
Yet while the goddess distorted his mind, a new fear was born within Arson. The fear of loss that many mortals dealt with. The suffering brought on by old age, and the loss of the ability to remember details with the crisp perfection that his own memory offered him.
Even more rage bloomed to life in the depths of his mind at an instinctual loss of times that rightfully belonged to him. Whether they were cherished or not, Arson’s mind was his own and the power within his own bloodline roared in defiance at what was happening to him.
The time within Origin was meant to be wiped away completely. Yet only certain pieces were shifted, rather than taken.
The only time successfully washed away, Carter and Almarine’s appearance within Origin, as Freedom used the majority of her available power to clean his mind free of those experiences, Freedom unaware that Arson had previously met the pair before entering Origin until she dove deeper into his memories.
A new story was built within his mind, filled with far more violence and loss than Arson truly experienced while in Origin. His time with Breaker was turned into a heartless master’s will to forge a fierce assassin. Rebellion, rather than being understanding as he had been, now would be remembered as a bone breaking sensei that made Arson learn entirely through pain.
Magnus and Merlin weren’t reserved and calm, but instead tyrannical in nature. All of his time with Osiris was made to be a grueling torture while jailed by the Celestial.
Even further, Arson’s time with Acu, was changed from a time of learning, into a time in which the man had hunted Arson with a bow, making Arson learn to use the bow, not from his desire to learn the art, but instead at his only chance at survival.
The discordant memories made no sense when looked at chronologically, nothing lining up, nor being placed in locations that built accuracy on how they played out. Yet the goddess now living within him would make Arson’s every attempt to decipher the time period impossible, muddling the memories to forever hide the fact that her new dwelling was his very soul.
To further pull away Arson’s mind from this secret, she used a memory that had already been changed in Arson’s mind to reveal the truth. Even as he dreamed and his shadow rose within his mind to take over his body, Arson’s first memory played in his dreams.
The first time he was held by his mother became an absolute nightmare of a vision in his sleeping mind. Where he could first remember being pushed away by Queen Armor Archon, had been changed to flicker between the fake memory and reality.
The nurse that held him, handing him to his father, was the same. The visage of the king’s frown, had changed, flickering between a frown, and the smile the Cultivator had actually worn.
Then what played out next would haunt Arson even more than the original memory that the system itself had originally left him with. The woman who’d once raised a hand to gesture for the king to take away the baby with a scowl, transformed into Jade. His adoptive mother smiling as she reached for him, only for her to be replaced once again by the Queen of Maelstrom, that Arson had truly believed gave birth to him.
The image sporadically changed from love to dismissal and back again, chaotically flickering on repeat in Arson’s mind so vividly that Arson began to thrash. Even his sleeping mind fighting against what he was being shown.
Finally Arson’s shadow took over completely, taking a deep breath as he looked around, leaving Arson to battle against his nightmares in the depths of his soul.
Once more Freedom emerged from Arson’s soul, her work within his mind completed for now. Again she hugged the body of her chosen champion stroking his hair lovingly.
“Hello, my beloved Reaper,” said Freedom, giving name to the darkness within Arson. Arson’s Gestalt form smiled, tilting his head backward to look up at the goddess Freedom.
“Hello mother, what shall you have me do?”
Freedom kissed Reaper on his forehead, staring into the black depths of her child’s eyes, speaking softly as he came to his feet, the goddess floated behind him as she spoke.
“Protect our home. Complete these foolish trials until Arson wakes.”
Reaper nodded, looking toward the box in his vision and then toward the fight occurring in the distance between a group of masters and the Ancient known as Almarine.
*Tribulation Trial 1: Seal the forgotten races within the plane of the primordials. Within the City of Palaces beneath Origin, a new beginning must arise!*
Everything around began to shake. The deserts, the glassy wasteland, and even the cloud of mana that surrounded the destruction before Reaper, quaked violently as the sky above ripped open.
Reaper looked up to see beasts larger than cities themselves, fighting throughout the sky above him. Portals began to fall from the opening above him, smashing into the desert all around him, spawning beasts of all kinds, amongst humanoid armies all converging toward one another all at once.
Trees began to grow through the sand, and even stranger was the ancient city that broke through the glass of the destroyed Origin. A complex maze of palaces, mansions and castles rising from underground as if being created from thin air quickly became a battleground unlike any Reaper had experienced.
Arson’s other Gestalt forms moved to surround Reaper as he spawned Arson’s scythe from his spatial inventory. Reaper cracked his neck preparing himself.
Anastasia's face had been missing from the watch's screen, now it popped up. Her visage locked in a horrified scream, silent to the world around her as her partner’s body was once more puppeteered by a being both foreign and belonging rightfully to Arson’s very soul.
*Phase 1 of 11: Close all entry portals and survive the battle of supremacy between the forgotten races to continue the trials of Endless. Good luck young Godling.*
Reaper looked back at his siblings as they nodded toward him, and then back up toward his mother. The daughter of King Gestalt smiling down at him as he nodded once and looked out at the battle before sneering.
“As you wish…”
…
Arson awoke in an unfamiliar place to the sound of Anastasia screaming for Arson to wake up. Though the room he was in was literally burning down, he felt no heat, only confusion at how he’d arrived where he was.
“Calm down Ana, I’m up, I’m up…”
*Trial 4777: Time loop: stop the city of Olympus from burning down. Save the gods from being massacred by their demigod children. One of seven gods left alive until restart.*
“Anastasia, what the sparks is going on here, how did we get here?”
“You are asking me, I was going to ask you!”
“Wait, you don’t know either?”
“Not a sparking clue, kiddo. One moment we are flying away from an explosion caused by Bloom, and the next thing we are here and I’m yelling at you to wake up.”
“Explosion, what explo—“
An explosion rocked the side of the building, and the counter in Arson’s vision dropped to zero, and Arson once more found himself laying on the ground. He blinked in confusion, noting that the heat in the room he was in had dropped drastically, and the smell of smoke that had been strong but a moment prior, had become faint and distant.
“What in the bloody depths just happened…?”
Arson sat up, and looked at his watch to see a screaming Anastasia, yet no sound touched his ears.
“Ana?”
He received no response, and rose to his feet, once more looking around. It was then that he saw a mirror and gasped in alarm in what he saw.
“What happened to my face!”
Looking back at Arson was a blonde haired, blue eyed young man in a toga, with a halo floating where his crown would normally sit just above his head. His normally tall and tan features replaced by a shorter pale skinned male that was completely unfamiliar to Arson.
Arson jumped as all of a sudden Anastasia’s voice started to pierce the air as she screamed at the top of his watch’s available speaker output, until Arson lifted his wrist to look at her.
She stopped screaming momentarily, tilted her head in confusion, and before Arson could say a word, started to scream again.
“Stranger danger! Who are you and what have you done with Arson!” Arson tried to respond, but Anastasia continued to scream as if she was being mugged.
“Ana, Ana, Ana, stop sparking yelling. It’s me, Arson!”
She stopped yelling, frowned, and tilted her head at him before she opened her mouth to start screaming again. Arson squinted at her, lifting a pointed finger and aimed it at her before she could even start, only for her to smile and start nodding with a smile.
“Just checking.”
“So where are we?"
Arson shrugged.
“Olympus maybe, the name makes me think of the armors within the dump that we use to train in the various stances of Omni, but that is impossible, that place was destroyed a long…”
Arson trailed off, looking out a window at a battle surging in the streets of a paradise that floated in the sky. A city literally floating on the surface of clouds, during the midst of being burned down.
“Hmmm... well, that doesn’t look good.”
Anastasia started to scream again, until Arson scowled down at her.
“What? I thought the moment called for it, my bad…”
Arson rolled his eyes, only for the wall beside him to crumble. Two giant figures burst through the wall, both fighting for their lives in a life or death scramble to survive.
One completely familiar, held a shield with a familiar tree on its surface, appearing to be a young Osiris. While an even younger looking man, lifted a sword longer than Arson’s original body above his Battleshield master in a single hand.
Arson and Anastasia began to scream then, drawing the attention of the sword-bearing giant, giving Osiris enough time to lift his shield and knock away the massive blade, Arson forced to dive out the way of the spiraling blade.
Arson rolled and sprang back to his feet, watching as Osiris began to beat the disarmed foe savagely with his tower shield.
After just under a dozen savage blows, Osiris crushed the man's head with a punch weighted with enough might to make the giant's head crack open. The sound of the split skull ringing through the room loud enough to blot out the rest of the chaos thrumming in the city around them momentarily.
Osiris looked back at Arson for a moment, and gave him a nod, before kneeling.
“We must leave, my lord, the city is falling and our family is quickly being slain. What would you have me do?”
Arson looked down at his watch, feeling an invisible shrug brush against his mind as Anastasia looked away as he looked to her for answers. He lifted his head, searching for the right words, only for a spluttering of vague blathering to be expelled from his lips.
“Umm, yup.”