With a close of his eyes, a holding of breath, a moment caught on a dewdrop of starlight flowing down from infinity, Jordan… died?
Darkness was everywhere. Empty and cold. It stretched on beyond any semblance of self and being. It yawned, chasmic—a void that consumed all, yet was nothing in itself.
And then the dew fell, and there was light. It pierced through the veil of what was and could be and will be. The lancing rays of the journey’s end called to him, stretched across vastness unspoken.
A light at the end of the tunnel.
Jordan looked at it, and understood what it meant. He heard it calling to his soul. It was the end. A new beginning. An endless adventure that began with a single step that knew no ending. That would never finish falling, because it was the last one any life would take.
It called to him with his last breath. So Jordan… turned the fuck away.
Fuck no, I’m not going into the light! No! He refused!
“Eh? Aury, where—no! Not that way foolish girl” An old, gruff voice called out as a large calloused hand gripped Jordan by the nape of his neck and dragged him, kicking and screaming, into the light.
“No! No—I won’t do it! I promised! I promised I would rage! Raaaaah!” Jordan’s mind was frantic with panic.
He had promised—sworn to himself that he wouldn’t go gentle into the night, that he would make up for shaming his father at his eulogy. As frustratingly distant as that memory seemed, half drugged and faded beyond veils of static in his mind, it struck him now. It consumed his entirety. Just like the darkness. Just like the light.
But despite his protests, Jordan was forced closer and closer to the oblivion that awaited. The door at the end of the hall loomed ever larger and the meaning for the light at the end of this tunnel pressed down upon him.
And with as much ceremony as a freshly washed cat launching itself from the bathtub, Jordan was plopped down onto the other side, sprawling onto the ground.
“Ow—huhhh—what—huhhh—is—huhhh—this—huhhh—place!?” Jordan ‘shouted’ at Rahm.
The old man walked out of the doorway, grinning before stopping to look down at Jordan. Like he was studying him.
Jordan, for his part, couldn’t breathe. It felt like he was having an asthma attack, though he’d never had one before to compare it with. Did the Brat have asthma? His airways were closing, and his body was trembling as though lightning were stabbing into him. Like being trapped in a wild static field, shocking him constantly from all sides. His muscles kept spasming, and looking down at the Brat’s hands he saw… the impossible.
His new body, for the first time since he’d been trapped in it, was sweating.
Ewww, groOoss, he lamented silently. The sweat was slightly blackish and not healthy looking.
“Hmm, okay, looks like this won’t kill you after all. Good! That would have been… awkward,” The old man said.
Jordan glared at him with all the righteous indignation the world could offer, but Rahm only smiled sheepishly in response. He reached into his white lab coat and pulled out a few beakers, hemming and hawing over various ones. After juggling a dozen of them, finding space in a jacket whose pockets knew no end, he finally setlled on a ruddy white mixture filled with questionable looking specs of brown.
“Here, drink this—it should help!” He smiled warmly.
Jordan eyed him with great suspicion.
“What—huhh—is—huhh—er—huhh—fuck—huhh—it.” Jordan grabbed the vial and drank it down in-between rasps.
It tasted… surprisingly good! Like a poorly mixed white chocolate hot cocoa. The pleasantness of the drink ended abruptly at the end, however, when he ran into chunky dregs that were particularly nasty. They had an abrasive texture with an earthy feel that made Jordan feel like he was drinking sand.
“Ugh, what is this? Crushed rocks?” Jordan griped, though he was glad to do so through clear, workable lungs.
“Actually, that’s fairly accurate. Ground, white Jade mixed with—”
“Are you serious!?”
“Hmm?” Rahm looked quizzically at him, “Yes. Why?”
“Won’t drinking something like that cut up my stomach, or something?” Or was that glass? Jordan wasn’t sure.
“Hmmmmm….” The fucker paused to think it over!
“Nah, you’ll be fine.” He waved it off four times over. “Come on Aury, let’s get going.”
The old man grabbed Jordan by his scruff and lifted him to his feet. Patting him on his back, he pushed Jordan ‘encouragingly’ onto said, unsteady feet. Jordan stumbled cursing the impracticality of the low heel, wedged sandals he wore, despite their surprising comfort. He turned to glare at Rahm again, but then stopped as his jaw hit the floor.
A golden sky stretched onward forever, white radiant clouds piled on top of each other for miles on end, reaching towards eternity. Mountains hung among them, floating against the backdrop like whales singing in the oceans with buildings so small from the distance, they could have been no more than an impressionist painting in an art gallery.
Jordan stood dazed, surrounded by an array of precious gems and materials, brilliantly shining from an unknown light source that illuminated the entirety of the world around him now. The structure beneath appeared to be a dais, made of a single diamond faceted with endless additional jewels. The entire thing was larger than the Rose Bowl his father had taken him to as a child.
Looking around, Jordan could see that the platform was ringed by archways of seamless white quartz, standing as gateways into darkness just like the one behind him. The diamond itself hung in the air. Another island in the clouds like the landmasses dotting the sky above.
Dizzy with vertigo from a height so large as to be impossible, Jordan stumbled over the gemstone floor. His eyes fixated on a piece of sapphire that was stretched out, like a gentle wave, but cut off from a single piece as long as an apartment block. It was woven into the flawless, opaque diamond of the dais, giving the impression of a pathway towards the middle of the massive crystalline structure he stood on. Thousands of jewels shone along the edge of its path, lighting it like a runway.
A quick glance confirmed that all the archways had similar paths, leading to the beautiful azure capstone gem that sat at the center of them all, like the heart of a whirlpool.
It wasn’t all blue, however. Different paths had different colors, some gold, and some silver, all brilliant and shining in the light of the glowing world. Wondrous imagery, murals of natural beauty given impression through the mosaic of simple, yet preciously sourced colors.
There was a warmth to the place, a sense of majesty and conviction in the very air. It caressed against Jordan’s skin, promising reverie, singing to the desire for redemption in his soul. And the smell was…
Dear god! Jordan gagged as his throat burned.
The place smelled awful! Whatever potion the Brat’s grandfather had given him seemed to do nothing to counter the vile scent of the ‘beauty’ around him. Despite the unfathomable grandeur, it smelled like he was in a rotting trash can filled with moist sewage. It reminded him of the Mandala the Judges had tormented him with.
“Ugh, god, what is this place?” Jordan, turning a bit green, was once more startled at his own gratitude for the corset strapped to his chest. He’d have lost the potion he just drank without it.
“Well you said it.” Rahm answered. “God.”
Jordan raised an eyebrow as they began the long trek towards the center of the platform, the point where all the archways directed. Was there an elevator or something there? He thought about it, but dismissed the thought to round on Rahm.
Pinching his nose to protect from the smell, Jordan nasally asked “What do you mean by that?”
Rahm cocked his head and huffed. “Exactly that Aury! Gods! You’ll see them in a bit, once we get off this landing platform. Oh, by the way, I should probably warn you about something....”
Rahm paused at the end of what should have been a continued sentence. After a few more minutes of walking along, Jordan lost patience and prompted the old man desperately, “Warn me about what!?”
“Why this of course.” Rahm smiled playfully and pushed Jordan forward onto the capstone gem.
“Wha—" Jordan entered the middle of the platform and the entire world around him seemed to shift.
Space twisted in on itself, though Jordan wasn’t moving. Instead, a new path, leading diagonally from his current position off to another in the distance, was inexplicably visible from where he stood in the center of the dais. Like it had been there the entire time. It fit flawlessly with the area around it, perfectly integrated into the diamond in a way that made no sense with what he'd seen earlier. Another soft prod from the old man caused Jordan to jump onto the new pathway, walking along it seeing nothing… out of the ordinary?
This was making his head hurt.
Jordan walked along the bridge with gaped-mouth wonder until he reached the other side, and just like magic—the pathway was gone. As though it had never been. It left him standing on a smaller bridge leading off into empty space, hanging above the golden horizon below.
Rahm inexplicably appeared on the end of the bridge, smiling in his usual way.
Jordan pointed unsteadily at Rahm and demanded, “Was that… some sort of teleportation!?”
“Hmm? No, those are just roads you’ll find here and there,” Rahm waved dismissively, “It’s just an additional dimension, is all. The City planners couldn’t get approval for a proper bridge connecting the Western Crossing Points to the Journey’s End, so they got lazy and just built a bypass. They only circumvent the three typical dimensions like that when there’s budget constraints or if the deviation is deemed 'acceptable.'” He air quoted twice over.
Jordan looked at the man blankly. “Dimension? What the hell is that supposed to mean!?” He was no physicist, sure, but how was any of that nonsense supposed to make sense?
Rahm ignored Jordan’s reasonable inquiry, making Jordan grind his teeth in frustration, as they continued onward. Tripping over his heels again, Jordan found himself distracted immediately, gawking at the solid gold handrails of the bridge, carved to look like a series of serpentine dragons. It’s just out in the open! Does no one in this damn game world care about valuables!?
Thoughts of security were silenced, however, as Jordan beheld what lay at the end of the bridge. The place they were approaching looked disturbingly like an amusement park, with more landing bridges circling the area. They all funneled towards a giant centralized entrance built on a white stone that stretched in front of it like a parking lot. A barred wall of white metal with burnished gold accents, glittering like the sun shone directly on every portion of its surface, was blocking off all entry save through its main gate.
Things took a turn for the strange(er), however, when Jordan noticed the sign hanging on the oversized walls. It rested above the entrance and said “Welcome to the Celestial City!” The only problem was... it looked gaudy! Like a rhinestone nightmare made by a deranged six year old intent on manifesting the glory of the Bratz dolls. It clashed horribly with the austere, heavenly aesthetics around it!
Only Jordan seemed to mind, however. People of all races and walks of life were milling about. Many looked bored, even more confused, and they kept pouring in from multiple directions along the bridges and highways stretching over open sky. Their landing platforms were even properly connected with visible bridges, rather than dimensional bypasses! Some people had all the luck, Jordan supposed.
“Eh, pardon us miss. Sorry sir, coming through. Eh, sorry, just let us squeeze by real quick…” Rahm said, politely making way for the two of them through the bustling crowds. After a short distance, however, a man suddenly grabbed onto Jordan.
“You! What’s happening? Where are the guards? Did you… wait, you’re not…! Ah! Ahhh! Demon!” The man stumbled back, and Jordan’s face drained of color as he stared back at the man.
The man... was dead.
His neck was split open, though the wound dripped no blood and hadn't impeded his shouting. His skin was pallid in an unnatural monotone, standing out from the bone white of his hair and fur that periodically covered him. Giant fluffy ears, with a few faded red stains on them, stood out from the sides of his head to tower above him more than a foot in height. His clothes and ancient looking armor were rusted over and ruined nearly to the point of immodesty. His nose twitched in fear as Jordan gaped at the rabbit man.
“I…” Jordan said quietly. “Everyone’s… dead?” He asked Rahm as he now noticed everyone nearby had the same monotone paleness. They had been easy to overlook in the face of the spendor around them.
“Yeah, don’t mind them though, okay? The queue directors will work to sort them out.” Rahm smiled, trying to reassure Jordan.
Jordan looked up to the… pearly gates shining with unimaginable beauty. He was not reassured.
“Am… am I dead? What… but…” Jordan felt like his world was falling out from beneath him. He wondered if he fell into the golden sky below… would he ever stop falling?
“Hmm? No Aury, no! Don’t mind the dead, they’re just here for passage, that’s all. Come along now.”
He dragged Jordan through the shambling crowd. The occasional dead man or woman turned to regard them, or even shout at them. The occasional plea, or outstretched hand, but… they all looked as confused as Jordan felt. Like they didn’t even know they were dead. Wouldn’t someone know they were dead?
“This way,” said a bearish voice from nearby. “Come along now.” The voice was full of authority, though laced with boredom, and it drew Jordan’s attention. It helped that it was close to the entrance Rahm was bringing him to.
The man, once in view, turned out to be no man at all. Instead, the rotund being, dressed in a beautiful teal, robe-like garment of some kind, had adorable round fluffy ears that clashed with the otherwise stern visage of his black and white furred features. Looking back and forth between the man and the crowd of the dead, Jordan couldn’t reconcile what he saw.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
All the races he could see, looked fundamentally human, though touched by a case of the ‘furries,’ as he saw it. The ‘man’ in front of him, however? It was just a… a…!
“Panda?” Jordan tugged at Rahm, “Why is there a panda here? And why is he wearing a kimono?” Wait, that’s what the clothes are? Jordan thought, wincing. It did look good on the anthropomorphic creature though.
Rahm looked surprised. “You know what a Panda is, Aury? Truly?”
“Well duh,” Jordan returned Rahm’s surprise with a blank look, “It’s a type of bear. Lives in…”
China. Guess I can’t say that though.
“Aury, they don’t live anywhere,” Rahm replied. “Animals got hit hard after the First Incursion. The Terrestrial Spirits, Gods of the land as they were, are all that’s left of them.” He gestured towards the bored panda queue manager, trying to convince a confused looking… child. Oh god.
A child. A small girl. She looked confused, thin, and emaciated, asking where her parents were. God fucking damn this place. Jordan’s heart ached, but Rahm dragged him forward past the guard, who gave them only a cursory glance. The girl looked up at Jordan as they passed, old tears long since faded but visible as stains on her dirt covered face. Her eyes were as hollow as her cheeks were shallow, and the signs of starvation were evident on every portion of her tiny body. It was easy to see since she wore nothing more than a few scraps of faded, decayed cloth.
Jordan… turned away. She’s dead now anyway, he tried to tell himself. He tried to ignore her cries out to him as they pushed past the throng. Before he could become engrossed in his feelings of guilt or remorse over what he’d seen, he was startled into a shriek of fear as a paw larger than his father’s old Nissan Titan dropped in front of him and Rahm.
Rahm whistled innocently as a mountain standing next to them, green as emerald, growled. It carried a twin tone resonance to it, one deep as the ocean, the other light as the sky. Like a man and a woman speaking in unison.
“Rahmiel. Long has it been since you passed this Gate. Long has it been since you brought a Mortal to these hallowed lands. Long has it—”
“Yeah, yeah, good to see you too Xegreash,” Rahm interrupted. “What’s it been, five years? I think that’s what they told me anyway.”
“Five years?” The giant tiger’s head descended down towards them. Jordan was absolutely sure he could fit his entire living room in her mouth, no contest. And despite the twin tone nature of her voice, Jordan had a very distinct belief that this tiger was female.
He could have been wrong as he couldn’t… ‘check.’ Despite not being built anthropomorphically like the panda, she was wearing a damn toga of all things, draped across her like a dress. She had a regal air about her, despite wearing cloth large enough it could have been used to fumigate an apartment complex. Yet, regardless of the immensity of her presence, her power in this place looming over them, there was a gentle feminine quality to her. A beauty carved into her feline features.
She also blushed at Rahm, which was a good hint she was a girl, and capable of more than a simple cat could do. Jordan was fairly certain, after all, that cats couldn’t blush.
“O-oh?” Her green cheeks turned pinkish. “Did you come from another entrance previously? I haven’t seen you in so long, but… no that’s fine, you can come from other places if you want.”
The cat shifted uneasily next to them, but as delicate of an action as it would have been on an actual cat, her size turned every movement into a localized earthquake. Jordan fell flat on his ass holding on for dear life, though Rahm seemed completely immune to the trembling ground.
“Xeg, you know how it is. I’ve got to come and go from different places. I got in trouble the last time I, er, forgot where I planted a Crossing Point.” Rahm rubbed at the back of his hair awkwardly, which made odd grinding noises like stones beating against one another as his hair resisted the light hearted gesture.
The Tigress growled, low in her throat, as her tail gently swished behind her. But the simple gesture caused mass destruction! The green, Washington Monument sized tail flung dozens and dozens of confused ghosts off, hurtling them into the sky screaming as guards dove for cover.
“You’re just saying that as an excuse Rahmiel. And don’t call me Xeg, it’s… embarrassing.”
Are they… just going to pretend that the hundred guys flying off in the distance isn’t happening? Jordan stared incredulously.
Rahm lowered his head, ignoring the apocalypse around him, and met her eyes pleadingly. “Xegreash, come on. It’s me, Rahmiel!” He reached out and began to scritch at her paw. Her toe beans are bigger than him! Jordan backed away. He did not trust cats.
It turned out to be a wise decision.
At first, the giant cat blushed even more, and then, shockingly, began to fade from sight. She left only trailing glittering motes of energy that pulsed a transparent outline of her form, like she was a constellation of a tiger walking among them. She purred contentedly, an impossible action for a creature that should have only been able to chuff affectionately, but then, in typical cat-like fury, she snapped back into reality, fixed her eyes on Rahm, and with a free paw bopped him lightly with casual annoyance.
It appeared like a light strike from a house cat, anyway. Lazy and simple. A warning to back off before things get serious. Relatively speaking, however…?
The ‘light’ bap cratered Rahm into the ground as though he’d been struck by a claymore mine hanging above him like the sword of Damocles. The force splintered the beautiful white stone beneath him, sending a shockwave that sent Jordan tumbling backwards as more dead spirits cried out, flying away. Jordan absently noted that the dead must have been lighter now then when they were living, given the ridiculous air time and distance they got—the giant cat had just scored five dozen of home runs, after all. And she didn’t even look like she was trying!
Looking up dizzily, Jordan was frozen by complete terror. Gasping with an explosion of tears, he looked upon the bent, broken mess that was the Brat’s grandfather. His arms were twisted in a dozen places unnaturally, his face and chest were concaved in, and his entire body looked like it had been pancaked as blood leaked out of everywhere, staining his coat and everything nearby red. Like he’d met the business end of a hydraulic press.
He didn’t move from the crater.
He didn’t move… from his grave.
“Oh god. Oh god no…” Jordan mumbled, crawling away from the surreal carnage. It felt like a part of his brain was going crazy with static. Emotions waring inside, as he didn’t know what to do. So he did the only thing he could—he ran. He had to run, to get away now! He stumbled up onto his feet, only to fall tripping on his pink dress. So he dragged himself on the ground desperately, black fingernails digging into white stone with surprising ease. Every instinct was screaming at him that he was going to die unless he—
A growl that could have drowned out a heavy metal concert tore his attention upward to the angry tiger. Jordan… couldn’t run. Fear paralysed him to his core as a paw softly settled nearby with a cataclysmic thumping noise. Its claws flexed slightly, sending spikes larger than his life’s previous body into the ground.
“And who, pray tell, are you?” The creature loomed above him like the moon poised to crash upon the earth, her breath so foul smelling that Jordan gagged, before he made an odd ‘meep’ noise as he… relieved himself between trembling legs. The tiger’s face scrunched at the sight and smell, before recoiling.
“Mortal filth. Why do you smell so foul? It is not just that liquid leaking from you. I don’t think I’ve ever beheld a creature so tainted with sin. Guards!” The cat thundered out as the world around Jordan trembled, ears ringing from her volume. A few robed animal spirits trundled over.
“Yes, Caretaker?” one of them asked.
“Where’s Guard-Captain Dolknar? This one is bound for Asurias, without a doubt. Take her away before she… leaks more.” The tiger made shooing motions with a paw, creating a small hurricane of force that threatened to hurl Jordan back further. He was saved only by the entrenched nails he’d dug in earlier.
“Er… wait, Xeggy. Ehrh. That’s my Grand, ahwk!—” Jordan heard a spitting noise followed by what he could only assume were teeth hitting stone nearby, “That’s my Granddaughter, and she ain’t dead yet so you can’t process her!”
Jordan looked up first in relief that Rahm was alive, but then with transfixed revulsion. Rahm began to stand up, limbs fused to the jagged floor tore chunks of flesh off as they ripped free. With a morbid, dying grey light suffusing his form he just regrew the lost tissue. Bones ground back in place with a haunting cracking echo, and Rahm just… snapped his body back into shape like an old man stretching after a long day. It took only a few seconds, but Jordan was sure he’d have nightmares about it for years to come.
Assuming, of course, that he wasn’t in one now.
The cat sighed out melodramatically, creating a microburst. “Rahmiel… what are you planning? Why are you—” she paused.
Rahm was staring up at her with a bloody, shit eating grin on his face.
“Never mind.” The cat took one look at Rahm’s expression, turned tail, and left.
Jordan, hugging the floor, screamed in his mind. Did that cat just nope the fuck out!?
The mountainous feline walked away, almost sulking as she did. Her giant paws left no destruction on the stone like her tail had, but thumped along like a slowly lumbering thunderstorm fading into the distance. The effect was aided dramatically when she literally faded into the distance. Damn invisible cats!
“I’ll see you next time Xegreash!” Rahm waved merrily, before turning to Jordan. “Okay, let’s go before she detects that and gets mad.”
“Detects what?” Jordan asked. “Did you do something?”
He froze briefly, as though caught stealing cookies from a jar, and then nodded. “I may have… intimidated her.”
Jordan stared at him in disbelief. “Intimidated? She just gave up and walked away though. How was your smiling intimidating?”
It had been freaky as shit, no doubts there, he thought.
“Xegreash and I go way back, and you can say a lot with a smile. You should remember that Aury.”
Jordan rolled his eyes, convinced now that somehow Rahm and the cat must have been an item. He seemed crazy enough, so why not? It would explain why the cat kept blushing, and why she got fed up with him so quickly! Jordan felt it could even work out, if just because he’d known a girl in his old life that claimed she was in a relationship with her cat. So why not? Women were crazy! Cats were crazy! And at least Xeg-whatever could talk.
“Who was she anyway?” Jordan asked.
“Xegreash, the Incandescent Elusive Star. She’s one of the appointed Sacred Guardians, er, Caretakers as they’re called now I suppose. Everything on this side of the Celestial City is her territory, but all the entrances have a guardian like her.”
Jordan narrowed his eyes. “All the entrances? There’s more than just this one?”
Rahm chuckled. “Of course! You can see how slow the line moves—how many dead there are here. The Bureau of The Journey’s End is backed up enough as it is. If everyone who died had to go through the same gate at once? Oof, it’s bad enough as is.”
“Backed… up?” Jordan said, staring at lines of dead still stretching back to the entrance, and off into the horizon they ventured towards. There were so damn many of them!
“Yeah, it’s bad,” Rahm nodded. “They’re still working through the backlog from the Second Incursion, and that was, oh, a thousand years ago? Give or take? That girl you saw, pleading with the guard? She’s been there for a century or more since she hasn’t been able to get in yet.”
“That’s awful!” Jordan cried out.
“I know, Aury. I know. That’s the just way the City is, sometimes. Too wrapped up in its own red tape to get things done. It wasn’t really des—”
“You’d think,” Jordan interrupted with a scoff, “Heaven would be more… I don’t know. Amazing? God is great and all that? Not like the freakin’… er,” DMV, he wanted to, and of course, couldn’t say.
“Heaven? Oh, I see where you’re confused. Aury, this ain’t the Heavenly Expanse.”
“What?” Jordan blinked up at him.
“This is the Solarius Realm, which is still part of the Prime Expanse. Right now we’re in the Celestial City,” Rahm answered. “While the Spirits up here are called ‘Gods’ this isn’t where people spend their afterlife. It's where they get sorted into where they go, well now they do anyway. It’s also where every aspect of the Material Realm, from weather patterns, to land Essence management is governed.”
“So it's like… Limbo?” I’m surprised I can use that word, he thought.
Rahm nodded. “I guess you could call it Purgatory, in that sense at least. Though, most of the Gods here would be highly offended if you said that to them, so best to keep that to yourself, okay?”
“What? That’s… oh! Oh I remember this place!”
“You do? That’s great Aury!” Rahm beamed, almost Catella-like, at Jordan. But it wasn’t anything from the Brat that Jordan recalled.
People said there was a place you could go in the game and break the rules. He remembered seeing a few videos of people doing… weird things to the game. Shifting continents, breaking physics hilariously, even one instance of someone skiing down a mountain on a t-rex-looking thing while the moons crashed into the planet. That one got a ton of well deserved views, but the point was people got creative.
Jordan wouldn’t have thought twice about it normally, but he remembered the buzz about how it had all been done in-game. No mods! In theory, if you knew where to go, and had a way to convince the various governing systems of the game, you could do anything. Change anything. Convince the game to mod itself for you because every line of code, every function of the game, was represented by NPCs and ‘Bureaus’ in this place. This city in the sky.
Well, his version of an NPC, at least. Jordan had no idea if any of these animal-gods had ‘powered cores’ or whatever.
The only balance Jordan had heard about, was that only the highest level players could get in. That meant those who had reached Immortal rank, which was past the time breaking the game mattered. Even then, Jordan recalled the endless bitching people had online about trying to break the game and having the bureaucracies constantly fighting them on it. Apparently wrestling against the underlying code for HMIA was difficult, who’d have guessed?
Back on Earth, Jordan had sympathized with the poor streamers struggling against the seemingly needless difficulty to cheat the game’s rules, but now that he was living in the game?
Well, he was perfectly content to just let the gods do their thing, and not let anyone mess about.
And his laissez-faire attitude certainly had nothing to do with the fact that he didn’t have any way to exploit the game himself. He wouldn’t do anything like that. Really! He eyed a floating castle in the distance, wondering if it were one he’d seen in a video, and tried to recall anything useful about it. Not for exploits though!
Sadly, however—no matter how much he racked his brain—nothing came to mind, so he gave up. He'd probably just get killed trying anyway. Besides, something was bothering him, so he finally voiced the million dollar question.
“Rahm… why are we here?” Jordan asked, feet clicking with annoying cheer on gemstone roads that were starting to transition under him. The old man had said they were going on a ‘quick’ trip, and Jordan had the not-so-sneaking-suspicion he’d been lied to.
“Hmm? Oh, well, you know, I may have… forgotten that I… left Kioko up here last time I visited. It's fine though! I’m sure everything will work out. Besides—there are a few items I have that we can use to help you catch up with your cultivation.”
“Culta-what now? Oh, crap! Right, that’s in this stupid gam—er, world. Wait, what all will this entail?” Was he going to be sitting on some mountain meditating to the heavens? He wasn’t sure how the game handled it, but he was pretty sure people just allotted training time and used items to speed up the process. The virtual characters took care of the rest in the game world for you. The idea of doing it himself manually was… less than appealing.
“Don’t worry so much Aury! We’ll be there soon, though we’ll probably stay the night and what have you. You’ll be back home by tomorrow night—at the latest! I promise.” Rahm said with a reassuring side hug. Jordan eyed him, instantly suspicious and filled with a strange desire to kick the man’s shin.
“How much further until we’re… wherever we’re going?” Jordan asked. Wait, did I just seriously ask a variant of the ‘are we there yet?’ God damnit! Jordan was less than pleased with his resurgence of youthful impatience.
“Oh, my place? It’s not far. We just have to get through customs, get you a visitors pass, then we’ll take the transit system over to the far side of Argent Fields of the Timeless Haven. I’ve got a small place just near a cosmic oasis, very low land value due to the light pollution after it got installed. In this case, I was happy with it, but always double check locations when buying property. A place will be cheap for a reason!” Rahm nodded sagely, waggling a finger.
Is he... giving me real estate advice? Really!? “Why are you telling me that? Aren’t I like, eight or something? How is that relevant to me?” Jordan was half convinced the man was daft. Shouldn’t he be telling him about how that cosmic-whatnot would aid with unlocking the mysteries of the universe while he culta-whatevered amongst the stars? He made it sound so… mundane! Prices? Light Pollution? What the hell!?
“Good advice is great to have, no matter how old you are, okay? Also, you’re ten sweety, and you’ll be turning eleven in a couple months.” Rahm corrected.
“Oh, joy.” Jordan breathed out, but Rahm ignored his ignoble retort. A tug of Ki pulled at Jordan with his exhale, likely trying to get him to dive into the mysteries of Rahm’s property management strategy, but Jordan was able to resist its lure and calm the burning energy inside.
A few minutes passed by before Jordan’s observations caught up to shifting ground underneath them, as though the river of murals that paved the way on the white stone were slowly compressing, joining with other locations he hadn’t seen yet. Looking around, he confirmed what he suspected, and saw multiple branching pathways beginning to coalesce into fuzzy view around him, all leading to a building that was just now starting to appear in his sight.
“Wait…” Something about their angles bothered Jordan greatly. “Do all the entrances lead to this spot?”
“Yup. We’re almost to customs.”
Jordan blanched in frustration. “Why is there only one building though? Didn’t you say there were multiple entrances? Shouldn’t there be multiple custom points, or whatever?”
Rahm nodded. “That’d be nice—there really should be. Ain’t though.”
Jordan blinked. “Then what’s the point of multiple entrances if they all get back logged into a single building!” Looking into the fuzzy ‘dimensions’ nearby, was just an endless ocean of bodies, impatiently waiting. Unmoving. Jordan was having flashbacks to working on Black Fridays staring out the windows as customers waited for the death toll to signal the stamped.
“Er, well… it’s to elongate the queue.”
“…seriously?” Jordan dead panned. Fury was beginning to bubble in his chest towards the grossly incompetent managment.
“…seriously.” Rahm replied sadly. “I’m afraid customs wasn't designed to handle the amount of traffic it receives nowadays. The Council's voted many times to expand it, but each time takes decades or more of debate, and they never do more than an extra service booth at a time. As the problem got worse, they decided to just expand the queue system as a temporary patch. You’ll… see instances like this a lot.”
“Instances like this?” Jordan shot back. “What, shitty bureaucracy?”
Rahm softly chuckled, shaking his head. “From the mouth of babes.”
“Huh?”
“Nothin’ Aury. You’re spot on though. Full marks!” He shot Jordan a quick, quadruple thumbs up.
Jordan glared at him, but was then struck by mortal terror. The kind that crept up your spine, coiling around almost sensually, before gripping your heart. The kind that whispered in your ear, taunting you. Like Aliens or Muffins would.
“Rahm, are we... going to have to queue?”
Even Rahm paled and shivered at the sudden mention. “Oh, Heaven’s no! I know a guy, and we can cut through. The dead won't mind, after all.”
“Oh thank God.” Jordan praised the divine, truly, deeply grateful in that moment he would not have to queue. Some things were fates worse than death.
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