“Ugh, this wine is awful. I don’t even like wine. I don’t know why I ordered it.”

“What’s your game plan?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why’d you call me here?”

“Cause I thought you’d want to see me tonight.”

“You knew I was gonna figure it out.”

“Eventually, though I am curious what gave me away.”

“I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.”

“Naturally, I didn’t invite you here to lecture you. I want to make conversation like we always do. Do you mind if I start?”

“Go ahead.”

“How’d you figure it out?”

“Pretty loaded question to start us out, don’t you think?”

“We have to start somewhere.”

“Fair enough.

First off, I took a peek at Midas’ records and noticed a long list of avatars who were experiencing changes with their mythoi, meaning the culprit had ties to Midas. Additionally, I already knew from Octave that the person I was looking for had an FMPD badge.

Initially, that threw me off, but then Octave mentioned some books he was given. Turns out they were altered to fit his new mythos. That’s when I figured out that you can only remanifest a mythos not change someone’s interpretation, which is why you needed the books.

That got me thinking, who else gives out books to people? That’s when I remembered you give books to your clients to help them read up on their own mythoi. Who's to say those books weren’t also altered?

If you used therapy as a disguise for remanifesting mythoi it would explain how you managed to get such a large group of people and do it discreetly. Moreover, being the most in-demand therapist for avatars meant you could easily work with Midas.

As for why you had a badge, there were a couple of reasons. Initially, I got tipped off when I asked you to meet up to discuss the abnormalities, unbeknownst to me at the time you were causing. Helga mentioned that she thought you were my new partner. At the time you were dressed in normal clothes, so she had no reason to suspect you. That is unless she caught a glimpse of an FMPD badge.

Normally there’d be no reason for somebody who wasn’t an officer to have a badge, but in your case, a badge acts as a skeleton key to the Underworld meaning it would be easy for you to request one for convenience's sake; you’ve been working with us long enough to have a badge even if you aren’t an official member.

While all this was compelling it certainly wasn’t definitive. Nothing about the facts I had put you above some of my other suspects. However, when you’re working with an incomplete puzzle you have to consider what answer satisfies the missing pieces.

After taking a step back and looking at the larger picture, you were the only person who solved two big gaps in the theory.

First off, was the Midas list. When I combed through the list I couldn’t find any commonality between the avatars on it. Looking back, I made a critical error. I had assumed that just because I had their files I had access to all their information, but there was one thing that was restricted: medical records, which therapy would fall under. If I were to go take a look at the avatars on that list I’m sure any who genuinely had their mythos changed would have you somewhere in their medical records.

Of course, you likely didn’t alter the mythoi of every avatar you met in therapy. Some might’ve been too stubborn to change their interpretation; even if you could change everyone’s mind, it would raise suspicion too fast.

What sold me on you, was the how. See everyone in the FMPD has their mythos on record. Even in special cases like Herman and myself who have their mythos classified, its effects would still be known to Quinn. However, your mythos wasn’t assessed by somebody in the FMPD, since you aren’t an official member.

I’d reckon only your mythos was confirmed, not its actual abilities. It’s a lot harder to find an avatar powerful enough to glean any info past the mythos itself, therefore confirmations require the avatar to self-report their capabilities. Those capabilities are then evaluated to confirm the avatar wasn’t lying.

However, your case was special. It’s embarrassing because I said so myself. Even though speaking every language is difficult, it technically isn’t impossible even without a mythos. You likely lied about your mythos’ ability and were able to pass the assessment, allowing you to disguise its true ability to remanifest mythoi.

The smoking gun was when I asked Draumur about his mythos. He confirmed that it was already altered once he left the Underworld, meaning it remanifested while he was incarcerated. Very few people come to visit the avatars, but you’re one of them. Moreover, since their powers are dampened they don’t notice the changes until they’re out, meaning any of the prisoners I talked to couldn’t alert me regarding any changes they noticed.

There’s a lot more, but that seems like enough to give you the basic idea.”

“It is quite impressive. Still, I can tell something is bothering you. Something you couldn’t figure out, yes?”

“Why?”

“Ha! That’s a tricky one. To say it in the simplest possible way, it’s all for the truth.”

“Are you searching for it?”

“No, I’ve already found it. I’m more seeking to enlighten others.”

“Elaborate.”

“Let me put it like this. Saxon, what do you think would happen if Seph went out and shot somebody dead in the middle of the street?”

“She’d be arrested.”

“Would she? And where would we put her? In her own mythos?”

“There have been wardens before her.”

“But none as good as her. Also, none we know right now that could hold all the denizens of the Underworld. No, we couldn’t afford to arrest Seph, because more than anybody else, she is irreplaceable to the FMPD.

Instead, it’d be far easier to try and cover it all up. Twist and bend the system to let her go free, since without her, ironically, things would go to hell. We’re lucky she chose to be a shut-in, but if she wasn’t. If she decided to one day start making demands, what are we going to do other than give in?

Going beyond that, do you even think Seph is a good warden? All she does is sit and play games and watch shows, she doesn’t do her job at all. Her mythos does it all for her, and better than anybody else could, since mythoi are one of a kind.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point, Saxon, is that we no longer live in a merit-based society. No matter how hard somebody tried they could never be as good a warden as Seph, because she was lucky enough to have the perfect mythos for the job.

Sure, in the past, some people were taller or faster, but nothing like what avatars have done to our world. One can’t even work in the FMPD without a mythos. Because mythoi are unique and so powerful, every avatar is irreplaceable. Try as hard as you like, but you will never be able to do what they do.

Effort is mute in the presence of irreplicable power. Isn’t an ideal world one where no matter who you are, where you’re from, or what family you are born into, so long as you try you can achieve anything? And isn’t that world unachievable so long as avatars exist?”

“A bit ironic coming from an avatar?”

“Oh, I wasn’t always like this. I’m something of a late bloomer you see. Originally, I was a scientist, so I never really touched religion. I studied avatars as a side project, but my main focus was on developing a renewable energy source.

It took a while, but soon enough somebody recognized my brilliance and decided to fund my research. We were making great progress until the person funding my research decided to introduce an avatar to our team. Their mythos allowed them to calculate things, and comprehend things far beyond a human level.

There was only one caveat to their joining: they wanted to be the lead on the project. Although it was my research, they threatened to pull funding if I didn’t let the avatar on the team; in their eyes denying the help of this superhuman was essentially torpedoing the project.

The avatar was brilliant, light years ahead of the rest of us, including myself. Whenever he would make a request backers would listen, and so things progressed quicker than expected. The generator I thought would take us a decade to make was done in just 3 years.

Tests went well, and everything was set for it to be unveiled. However, the week before our project was to be unveiled, and turned on to power the city, I realized a fatal error in the design. Our test conditions failed to properly simulate the real environments. I knew if the generator was turned on the results would be catastrophic.

I brought this to the attention of the project lead and showed him that his calculations were wrong, after all, he was better than us, not perfect. At least, that’s what I thought, but it seemed nobody agreed. He insisted that I had made a mistake, and didn’t even bother to check my work. After all, who was more likely to be wrong: the man gifted with powers of superhuman intelligence or just a normal person?

I was sure I was right, so I gave the backers an ultimatum: either I go or this avatar goes.”

“And they chose you.”

“Of course. They needed to keep their golden boy after all. Nobody could replace him, meanwhile, I’m just an everyday scientist. They could always just get a new one of me.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

Then a week later, the generator was unveiled, and it exploded killing 22,233 people, including 6,040 children. Of course.

You wanna know the messed up thing? Everybody I loved was caught up in the blast, but none had the blessing of going quickly. I was on a different side of town at the time for a job interview, so I was admitted to a different hospital than everybody in my neighborhood.

It was only once I finally got out that I learned that my wife, my children, my friends, my parents, my brother, my sisters, each one of them went slowly, and painfully, without me being there to comfort them.

The kicker, no modern medicine could save them, but there was an avatar who could; the only issue was that he charged too much and nobody could afford to pay. We didn’t live in the best neighborhood so we weren’t super wealthy. The only person who had that much money was me.

My wife insisted that her husband had enough, but the avatar didn’t buy it. He said without proof of employment he had no way to tell if she was ripping him off. You know I wanted to have a shared bank account, but with me making so much more than her, she insisted we keep it separate, so I could feel secure. I still think about how things would be different if I was just been a little more pushy that day.

During my time in the hospital, they didn’t have many good books, but they did have the Bible. Since all I could do was pray for the well-being of everyone who little did I know would be dead by the time I was out, I figured I might as well study prayer.”

“And that’s when you manifested your mythos when you read the Tower of Babel for the time. Becoming an avatar, the augmentation to your physicality, it’s what kept you alive right?”

“Yes. It’s a bit messed up, don’t you think? The very world that had taken everything from me bled me dry, had now handed me venom to fill my empty veins, and in a moment of desperation, I chose to live.”

“Eddi … I …”

“Come now Saxon, today’s meant to be happy. This is no time for tears. Afterward, I spent my time researching avatars, figuring out what made them tick, and how somebody could be so arrogant or greedy. My conclusion: power. People love power. It makes them feel like gods. As such, they cling to it.

So I knew if I was going to take the power from these gods I would need to become one myself. But that’s the funny thing about gods, they’re up there, we’re down here, and that’s comfortable for them, yet the moment you try to come up to their level, steal a fire, eat an apple, build a tower, and all of sudden you’re the bad guy.

That’s when I had an epiphany. Tell me, Saxon, what is the Tower of Babel about?”

“The origin of language.”

“Wrong! No, the Tower of Babel is about the collective power of people. Think about it, normal people, working together manage to build a tower that can reach god. They’re only stopped once they can no longer understand each other; but when they’re working together, average, everyday people can stand on the level of gods.”

“Eddi I’m not saying you’re wrong, but you’re going about this in the wrong way. You made Desmond attack people, Octave unknowingly force people to dance till they drop and enabled Draumur to build a crime family. How does this help anybody?”

“But I didn’t do those things. Desmond was crushing cars, and assaulting people far before I ever met him. During our sessions, he said it was to get out his frustration. In my opinion, he did it to remind himself that he was above others, and his mythos made sure he didn’t get caught. All I did was remove the aspect that was hiding him and put him out in the open.

As for Octave, yes I changed his mythos, but did he ever bother to check what he was doing? Gifted with god-like powers in the hands of a child, and to nobody's surprise it went wrong. He just assumed he knew how they worked. He used them recklessly, without care, and most of all was extorted by adults for his mythos. Even if the truth came out, do you think the people running the Epilogue would have made him stop, or would they have clung to Octave harder than before, since now he was far more than just a jukebox? I didn’t create the problem, I made it large enough so that people would care.”

“But what about Draumur?”

“As for Draumur, you’re right I did enable him. Yes, everything he did he couldn’t have done without the power I gave him.”

“So what’s the excuse?”

“After I read the Bible I looked into many other faiths. Something that intrigued me is that in most the Devil is depicted as an evil figure. However, there was one interpretation that stuck with me.

In this faith, the Devil existed to fix the flaws in the judgment system. See, whether somebody went to heaven or hell was strictly based on their actions, but this created an issue. If somebody lived their whole lives with evil in their hearts but lacked the tools to act on that evil, this person would never commit an evil act, effectively cheating their way into heaven.

That’s where the Devil comes in. It says that God created the Devil to enable those with evil in their hearts to act on that evil if they lacked the means to, so that their actions would be known, and they could be properly judged. The Devil was created to fix a broken system.

While yes, I did enable Draumur, I didn’t tell him to form a crime family. No, when he had that power he made the free choice to oppress people with it, to abuse it, and to cling to it.”

“So what? You’re playing the Devil. To what end?”

“I told you already Saxon, the truth. I want to build a tower up to the gods, not to walk amongst them, but so I can grab them by their ankles, and yank them down to our level. The issue is as I said, to build such a tower everybody must be working together.

Everybody lives in their own world, and thus there are as many worlds as there are people in this one. I need to show everybody the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That the power granted by mythoi is toxic to humanity, especially when it is given out randomly. It ruins the idea that effort is what matters by granting people by pure chance, godly powers unique to them. Moreover, that power corrupts people as all power does. What’s worse is they have no respect for the power they are given or understanding of the responsibility that comes with it.

Once again, Seph is the ideal example. She’s the perfect warden, not because of her efforts, but by chance. Her mythos is so pivotal to the FMPD that she could do whatever she wanted and we’d be powerless to stop. To top it all off, she doesn’t even care for her mythos whatsoever.

I gave her books on Hades and lectured her, but eventually, she threw the books out and became bored with my lectures. Do you wanna know how bad it got? I mentioned Día de los Muertos, and she asked if it was related to Hades.

On the Day of the Dead, when the souls of the dead are allowed to come to the land of the living, the traditional Mexican holiday, she asked if that was related to the Greek god of the dead Hades. I was so stunned that I just said yes, and I never had the heart to correct her. Even now she believes The Day of the Dead is related to Hades.”

“No. Eddi, please don’t tell me …”

“That I altered her mythos, meaning that when The Day of the Dead arrives the gates of the Underworld will fly open, and all the prisoners will be let loose, because that’s exactly what I did.”

“You’re insane!”

“I’m not going to force those criminals to hurt people, they could help, but we both know they won’t. People need to see the truth and experience it first hand, the cruelty of avatars. It’s what made me realize it, so I know, undisputedly it’s what will make everyone else see it as well.”

“This doesn’t need to happen, you can tell them. I’ll help you.”

“If I tell them, then the tower I want to build will sit on a foundation of glass. If I were to disappear, then so would everyone else as well. No, I can’t give them the tower this time.

A belief in something you have concluded from your experiences and tragedy is unshakeable, and if I am to challenge the gods my tower can be no less than unshakeable.”

“People will die just as everyone you loved did.”

“Don’t mistake my conviction for a lack of empathy. It’s with a heavy heart that I make this choice. If I could I would remake the system from the ground up. Sadly, the Devil only holds the power to fix the system, not remake it; our sins have accumulated over time, and this is the price that must be paid to fix them.”

“You keep talking like you’re gonna walk out of here.”

“I know what you are, copycat. You don’t impress me, your power won’t work. Don’t fret, you still have time. You know I spare no detail in my explanations; Seph knows that Día de los Muertos begins November 1st, so you have until then.”

A waiter approached the two men at the table. “Excuse me, gentlemen, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I noticed you finished your food, would you like any dessert? Given the day, we have Halloween specials, if you would like to hear them.”

“No thank you, good sir, we’ll take the check. Would you mind telling me the time?”

The waiter checked his watch. “Ah, it appears Halloween has just ended. I’ll go get your check.”

“Thank you. Seems you have less time than I thought, and so do I. It’s been nice talking, but I need to be somewhere. Don’t worry, I gave my card information on the reservation to handle the check.”

Another man approached the table, to which Saxon raised his hand dismissively.

“Sorry sir, can you wait? We’re talking.”

The man snickered. “Your friend just told me you finished.”

Saxon turned, hearing a familiar voice, to see Conroy Valentine standing at the table.

“Conroy, good to see you. We should get going quickly.”

“Of course boss,” Conroy said.

“Boss?”

“Yes, Saxon. You seem surprised. Don’t tell me you thought I was working alone?”

“If you had a group why not go public? It’s safer than hiding in shadows where no one will blink twice if you disappear.”

“I told you already I can’t be the foundation. People need to realize the truth on their own. It would be a bit hypocritical if I were to denounce power, only to wave my own around to curry favor.”

“Power can be used to protect.”

“Power only protects from power. Get rid of the problem, and there’s no need for the solution. And even then, no matter how hard one tries, power still hurts the people around you. That’s what happened to your home, isn't it?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Oh, I’m not blaming you. You just wanted more power, right? Doesn’t everybody?”

“I didn’t kill them.”

“You didn’t kill them? Well then they must have died of natural causes, but last I checked people don’t spontaneously die of old age, especially children. Someone did something, and it wasn’t me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to? An unintended consequence of an intentional action is indicative of carelessness and makes the results no less your responsibility. If you had bothered to look around, you would’ve realized the world of cardboard you were in; and I know you have a good heart, so you would’ve held back, as you are now, to have not hurt them, but what matters is that you didn’t, and now they’re gone.

I really should be going now. Conroy, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“No problem,” Conroy replied. With a wave of his hand fiery gates rose from the floor, and swung open to reveal a blinding white light on the other side. Both Conroy and Eddi disappeared into them, leaving Saxon all by himself.

He could feel his phone exploding with texts, emails, and calls, but he was too stunned to register it. Murmurs erupted amongst the diners, many checking their phones.

A loud explosion shook the building. The shock snapped Saxon out of his stupor. He glanced over to see through the glass walls of the highest floor of Kallipolis a rising plume of smoke near the Underworld. Eddi hadn’t lied. All of the criminals inside the Underworld had just been let loose onto Fable.

Saxon stood from his chair, and slowly made his way over to the glass walls. He stared out onto Fable, glancing at the city he loved before it inevitably turned into a hellscape, powerless to save it.

Saxon looked at his reflection in the glass walls. It was his fault. Out of anybody he was the closest to Eddi. He should have seen it sooner, but now it was too late. No, Saxon refused the notion that it was too late. He wouldn’t condemn himself to powerlessness before he had even tried.

He placed his hand on the glass walls. Calling upon the mythos of Orpheus, a loud high pitch sound rang out as the glass walls surrounding Kallipolis’ highest floor shattered.

All the diners turned to see Saxon step off the edge and fall. Many rushed to shattered walls. As they glanced over the edge they saw wax white wings erupt from Saxon’s back as he rocketed off into Fable’s night sky.

Once you’ve done wrong, there is no making it right, but there is making it better. Saxon was set back to the beginning. He refused to let anybody be hurt, but he couldn’t afford to hold back. So Saxon chose to atone for his mistakes the only way he could that would keep everybody safe, alone, a decision that in due time, he would consider his greatest mistake.