After the others left, it was just Aurivy and myself, studying the hand together. “Where do you want to go first?” I asked, looking at the halfling goddess. “Its origin, or its destination?” Given that we didn’t know how long the hand remained in this floor, either journey could take us quite a while, so I left it to the goddess that was more likely to understand things like this than myself.

Aurivy thought about it, before shaking her head. “We should go for the origin first. No matter where this hand ended up leaving for, its origin is a source of danger that we need to take care of before anything else comes through. Assuming nothing else has, so far.”

I gave a firm nod at that, looking at the hand that was frozen within the window of time. “Given the size of Fyor, we’ll need to work together if we want to get this done quickly. If we follow its path in real time, we could be spending years to follow it back to where it came from.”

Aurivy smiled, seeming to accept this fact readily. “You’re not wrong there.”

This was the first time that I had ever directly interacted with a member of the Greater Pantheon. Sure, I had seen Tubrock’s past antics on Lorek, but I had never interacted with one of them face to face, not until today. Taking a deep breath, I focused on how we could get this done. “If we use my Observation domain as the primary force, designating the hand as the target of observation, we should be able to narrow what we are observing with your Travel domain, and my History.”

Typically, I used the History domain as the foundation for my abilities, but that wasn’t going to work this time. If I used History as the foundation, and then threw in Aurivy’s Travel, there was a good chance that we could wind up traveling through time by mistake.

Aurivy appeared to understand what I was thinking, nodding her head in agreement. “So, instead of following them manually, we’ll use a trinity in order to get a complete record of its travels, and then we just need to visit the destinations listed. Do you think you can set the results up in the form of a list like that? Preferably, we want a highlight of anywhere where it stayed for more than eight hours, as well as both where it appeared on this floor and disappeared.”

“I can try, at least. This is a memetic creature, according to Leowynn, right? If I try to show too much information, I might get us infected by mistake. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to keep it simple.”

With another nod, Aurivy held out a hand, producing a golden sphere of divine energy. She had a soft smile as she passed the energy to me. “Use this for the trinity. It should have more than enough energy for what you need.”

Admittedly, I hesitated for a moment before I reached out to take the orb of divinity. I could sense that it was disconnected from Aurivy herself, meaning that she had severed her mental connection with it. At a guess, she must not have wanted her thoughts to conflict with my own when setting up this divine ability. Still, the amount that she gave me… it was at least half of my total divinity. Even if I used it for this ability twenty times over, there would still be plenty to spare. After all, Travel was only a support domain in this trinity.

Still, I focused, shaving off just as much divinity as I needed and creating three golden orbs. One of these orbs contained the ‘shavings’ from Aurivy’s divinity, while the other two were my own Observation and History domains. Aurivy stood off to the side, waiting patiently.

The creation of a new divine ability is never an entirely simple matter. Especially when you are making one out of multiple domains, and need it to fit an established idea. The fact that I was doing this for a single-use ability with someone else’s domain was not helping. With my eyes closed, I focused on the ability that I wanted to create, and began to establish an external divine circuit to use for this activation.

Thin lines began to stretch out from each of the three divine spheres, moving as if bound to an invisible grid, until they all met in the center. At this juncture, the lines became a thin orb that seemed to pulse unsteadily. This was the embryonic form of the ability that I wanted to create.

Only once I had completely solidified the image of the ability did the node stop pulsing. It released a dim glow, awaiting activation. “Okay… it’s ready.” I said, exhaling a long breath that I hadn’t realized that I was holding.

Aurivy nodded her head, and the two of us looked at the window to the past together. The newly created ability flashed, and a yellow file folder appeared in my hand, containing a thin stack of papers. After I opened the folder, I quickly glanced through each of the pages, letting out a sigh of relief. “I included a basic memetic censorship in the Observation domain. If any information were to be displayed that contained memetic influence, the text would become a black smudge.”

“Given that sigh, I’m guessing that there wasn’t any.” Aurivy smiled, and I gave a nod of acknowledgement.

“That’s right.” As I spoke, I kept the external circuit maintained, not wanting to dismiss it just yet. After all, this hand wasn’t the only thing that we would need to track, as I would need to do so to James as well, once we had traced this thing back to its source.

Looking at the first page, I placed a finger on the first line. “The initial entry says that it arrived in a large cave. There should be a trace of the coordinates, if you can follow them to the source.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” She grinned, golden mist forming around our bodies. The first line on the page lit up in response to her power.

When the mist cleared, the two of us were standing at the entrance to an enormous cave, leading into the side of a mountain whose peak I couldn’t see. The opening of the cave showed some obvious damage, chunks torn out and scorch marks visible within deep, carved grooves. “Was there a battle here, or something?” Aurivy asked, and I focused.

The second set of information attached to the line activated, containing the timestamp for me to establish a window. Aurivy stepped closer, making sure that she could see what I was looking at. “I’ll open the window a minute before its arrival.” I said, and she nodded her head.

When the window opened, there… wasn’t a cave on the side of the mountain. I blinked in confusion, fearing that I may have set the window far too early… until a sudden crash could be felt from the other side. Even as just a simple window, the energy felt like it would break through and reach us.

I gulped, clenching my fists as the side of the mountain exploded in a flash of red light. What emerged from the cave wasn’t just the seven-fingered hand, but rather an entire arm, all the way up to the elbow. The hand slapped at the ground, clawing into the dirt and trying to pull itself out to no avail.

Its shape twisted, clawing at the mountain and firing various destructive attacks that reshaped not only the mountain, but the surrounding landscape. Any one of its attacks looked as if they could destroy a nation, but Aurivy’s eyes trembled in realization.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“It’s not just a hand, Helen… it’s trying to pull its full self free.” When she said that, I realized the significance of what I was seeing. For starters, the palm of the hand did not contain a mouth, nor did the fingers have eyes. While the shape and color were the same as before, these were rather striking differences.

These differences were soon explained, however, when a black line appeared along the wrist of the extended arm. Black and red energy stretched out as the hand pulled away from the rest of the limb, snapping like thin cords.

Once the hand had completely severed itself, it fell to the ground while the rest of the arm retreated back into the cave. The hand twitched, writhing as the palm opened up. Sure enough, it gained its mouth and eyes after separating from the main body.

“So… this thing’s full body comes from the other side of whatever is in that cave?” I asked, and Aurivy nodded her head.

“This is both good news, and very bad news. It’s good that we have the direct connection here, so we don’t have to worry about any other connecting points in the future. But, it’s bad because the fact that this is a direct connection increases the chance that other things have come through as well.”

“They wouldn’t have come through before the hand, at least.” I pointed out, gesturing towards the cave. “That thing had to tear open the mountain to get out.”

Aurivy gave a nod of agreement. “Before we find out where it left, can you modify that new ability? We don’t need many details, just a number. How many creatures have entered this floor through this cave, but did not leave through it?”

I paused at that question. It wasn’t that hard of a modification, to be honest, and I could understand what she was wanting with it. “Alright.” I gave a weary smile, quickly making the adjustments. The ability flashed again, and a single sheet of paper appeared in my hand.

Aurivy glanced over at the sheet, nodding her head. “Okay, it could have been worse. This is still very bad, but it could have been way worse. Every connecting point will narrow down how many of those monsters get through to the correct destination. They could easily have taken entirely different paths after coming here.”

I glanced down at the paper, seeing the number five written on it. So, there are five monsters from the surface of Fyor roaming around somewhere in Fyor, having passed through here. “Let’s seal this place before that five becomes a six? I feel like just holding this paper is tempting fate.”

“...Terra wouldn’t be that mean, but I know what you mean.” Aurivy agreed quickly, extending her hand. “Her hand began to glow with a deep, golden light that shot into the cave. “This should nullify any kind of spatial or extradimensional property for any material inside the cave.”

After she said that, she began walking into the cave, and I followed along behind her. Although she said that she had nullified it, that wasn’t necessarily the same as destroying it. For all I knew, it could have been a temporary measure.

Thankfully, we didn’t have to walk far into the cave before we got our answer. There was a large ring of white stone that lined the wall at the very back of the cave, looking as if it were a natural version of a Fairy Ring. “Did your power completely sever the connection, or is it going to recover over time?”

When I asked that, Aurivy had a rather troubled look on her face. “I severed the connection… or so I’d like to say. However, I have no jurisdiction over the other side. If something attempts to pass through again, it will cause the connection to start recovering. If we want to completely remove the risk factor, we have to annihilate that white material, so that not even a speck of it remains to form that connection.”

“That… sounds easier said than done. Does it have to be so thorough?”

Aurivy gave a firm nod of her head. “That’s right. If even a single fragment of it is left, it will be able to operate as a portal. Although it might not be able to let as big of monsters through, sometimes the smaller ones are more dangerous.”

“Should we call the others, then?” I asked, and Aurivy turned to look at me.

“We could, but none of them are particularly specialized in such utter destruction. Ryone could probably do it, but it would cost her. Thankfully, we have you here.”

“...Me?” I asked in confusion, looking around to make sure that I didn’t mishear her.

“That’s right..” Aurivy confirmed, a grin slowly forming on her face. “You’re going to send that entire chunk of material into the past.”

Aurivy’s request was… not something that I was entirely confident in. I had accidentally created gates to the past before, but those had always been unintentional. Rather, I had always been careful not to do exactly that, because I was aware of how much danger it could pose.

“You want me to… transport that entire gate into the past?” I asked, gulping. Aurivy nodded her head with that same smile.

“That’s right. After doing so, one of two things will happen. Either the material will register as utterly destroyed and the link will be broken, or anything that attempts to come through the gate will be sent back in time as well.”

At the very least, this confirmed beyond any doubt that time travel was a death sentence. Otherwise, I could not fathom why a member of the Greater Pantheon would ask me to send such dangerous entities back in time.

I turned my head to look at the orb of divinity that Aurivy had given me. I had to wonder… “Did you know that we would need to do something like this?” I asked, knowing that the orb had far more energy than I would need for simply finding a list of locations in the past.

“Well, I certainly suspected it might be the case!” Aurivy admitted with a wide grin. “Sealing minerals like this isn’t easy, even for Ryone. And with the danger here, the only surefire method is totally removing it from this timeline. I decided to play it safe, and it looks like it paid off.”

I gave a small nod at that, taking a deep breath. For this one, I needed to use the Travel domain as the basis, with History backing it up to determine the destination. Thus, the connection with the Observation domain was temporarily severed, but it would be easy enough to restore the ability later, now that I had made it once.

Despite the dangers involved with this ability that I was creating, it was actually very simple in nature. All that I needed to do was send an object back in time. If anything it was easier than what I usually do with my windows.

The air within the cave began to shimmer with a golden light, which rolled out and wrapped around the white material lining the walls of the cave. As it did, I was able to sense the divinity pushing deeper, the material more than just a simple ring. Instead, it seemed to form a long tube that ran in a twisting pattern within the mountain.

Thankfully, the divine ability was more than enough to wrap around the entirety of this material. The golden shimmer in the air condensed into mist, and then promptly faded away. After it did so, the material was nowhere to be seen, and I let out the breath that I had been holding.

Nearby, Aurivy closed her eyes, before smiling and giving a firm nod. “Alright! That’s all for this patch!” She said, causing me to give a weary smile.

“This patch?” I asked, and the other goddesses from before appeared at the entrance of the cave.

“This one taken care of?” Bihena asked curiously, to which Aurivy nodded.

“That’s right, just finished. How have things been going on your end?”

Ryone let out an exhausted sigh. “There are seventy-eight other nodes throughout the layer that we were able to observe. For the time being, they’re all sealed off, but we don’t have a way to completely destroy them. And without any safety measures, we don’t have a method of seeing where each of them goes to, to know which ones are safe.”

My eyes bulged out at the number that Ryone reported, while Aurivy simply blinked. “Seventy-eight? I was sure that there would be more. I guess this material is even more rare than I thought. Well, at least we’ve got the best method of getting rid of it right here.” She grinned, hopping up to slap me lightly on the back. I felt my heart sink into my gut, realizing just what I’d be spending the rest of my week doing.

I only came here to learn about an ancient civilization…