When I was much younger, my sister kept a rabbit, Mr Bun, in the house with us. Mr Bun fancied himself an adventurer, hopping about the house and generally making a nuisance of himself. He would get into the drawers, behind the furniture and even getting into rooms where he was not allowed by pushing away at the door. None of us could be bothered with locking the doors so Mr Bun had the run of the place and I daresay he knew my house better than I did.
When my sister bought Mr Bun, the pet store told her that housebound rabbits lived much longer lives than rabbits that spent time in the outdoors. No idea whether this claim was true (its probably a pile of crap), but my sister believed it at any rate. Mr Bun would therefore be allowed the run of the house, but he would never be allowed to take a single step outside. That was the only rule my sister laid down for Mr Bun. But Mr Bun would some days look out of the window with curiosity and thump his feet in annoyance at being kept in the house.
So one day, I decided to leave the front door open by accident, knowing that Mr Bun would take the opportunity to run into the yard. I wasn't afraid that he would run away, since the fence surrounding our property would keep him in. My sister's freak out would be hilarious though, when she realized, or rather jumped the conclusion, that her pet would be playing in the grass, burning away his lifespan with every hop he takes. And so Mr Bun slipped out of the open front door into the great wide world.
Before he came running back in immediately.
No matter how I coaxed, Mr Bun would refuse to make another foray out of the house. He would steadfastly refuse to step out into the great outside ever again and would go on to spend the rest of his life indoors as my sister wished. I always wondered what scared Mr Bun so badly that he refused to make another dash for the outdoors. As far as I knew, there were no dogs or cats or other predators taking up residence in the yard. The yard was just as safe for a rabbit as the interior of the house itself.
Looking at the map before me, I finally realize what had been going on inside Mr Bun's pea sized brain when he took his first steps outside of the house. My mind swims and shouts incoherently in protest as it digests the information that had been fed to it. Mr Bun had spent rabbit decades exploring his world and knowing it inside out. Sneaking outside had shattered his illusions of what the world is, or rather what it should be. When confronted with information that contradicted everything that he knew about the world, Mr Bun decided to both literally and metaphorically run back inside the house, back to a place which made sense to him.
I want to run away. Run, run, run away. But there is nowhere to run to. The truth is staring at me right in the face. I have to deal with it.
The map The Voice had shown me when I was fist summoned was not wrong. Geography is pretty a much a one to one copy of earth from my dimension. The national borders of the various countries had been completely redrawn though and some countries had outright ceased to exist, but that was something to be expected from the ruinous Millennium War. Things were different, but familiar. That was why I could hit the ground running so quickly. The new world I was in was similar to my own dimension in all the ways that mattered.
Except that The Voice had not shown me the entire world map. With the map in front of me now as a frame of reference, its clear that The Voice had zoomed in the world map it had displayed on the laptop, and by panning the image about, gave me the impression the world map in its entirety was being displayed. Conveniently omitting the parts The Voice wanted to keep hidden from me. I would be given enough information not to act like a stranger in a strange land, but remain ignorant about certain matters.
And what was The Voice so keen in hiding from me? Honestly, I can only make a guess from the map Naiberg has kept hidden away. Not only can I not completely understand the ancient notations written on it, the information it displays is centuries out of date. Border demarcations and fancy heraldry cover the map's surface, making reference to long dead nations and kings. I am a man of many talents, but making the dead speak is not one of them.
So I begin to make some educated deductions. Firstly, this world is big. Much bigger than what I had previously assumed. The familiar landmass that I had assumed to be 'the world' is located right in the center and only makes up around a fifteen percent of Naiberg's map. And painted on the map right where modern Berlin would be is a golden church, or rather cathedral bearing the insignia of a featureless woman wrapped in red thread. Little painted figures of rugged looking men carrying pikes and muskets guard the borders of this section of the map.
So, Berlin had been Fate's base of power way back when this map had been printed. And now Berlin is where the Hero had been born. Coincidence? Or perhaps there is a deeper reason at work here? My common sense says yes to the latter, but I have no way of substantiating this suspicion. I just don't know enough.
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My eyes begin to peruse the other sections of the map, the parts that The Voice had chosen to hide from me. To the East of the familiar landmass, separated by the deep blue sea is another continent, one that is is completely unknown to me. Earth had nothing like this. Unfamiliar cities founded in completely alien geography made out of primarily sparsely vegetated plains, rocky hills and if the map is to be believed, rivers of lava. There are even cities build deep into the mountains themselves. The figure of a scantily clad cat girl with desert flowers in her long flowing hair lounges by the scorching beach of this new continent, her hand beckoning someone in the distance to approach. Perched on the crags of the mountains are rhino and hawk men, arms folded and faces drawn in stern frowns.
Hell. I am literally looking at a map drawn of hell. My eyes wander in the direction the cat girl's hand is pointing at. To the western sector of the map. To what I assume to be the place where the Host had come from. Heaven.
Green. Green all over the place. If Naiberg's map is to be believed, heaven is just one big plain, flat as a board and carpeted all over with grass and the occasional tree. No cities either. Instead, there are drawings of angels with their wings extended, hauling yurts and livestock through the air. There's even a comic representation of a pack of cherubs manhandling a sheep as they attempt to achieve liftoff with their stubby little wings. A group of angels led by a giant of a man stand at the borders of their realm, hands on the grips of their sheathed swords as they glare defiantly at the cat woman in the distance.
No way. Angels descend from a nomad culture? It makes the Host appear far less impressive than the impression I had received so far. Cuck man was also the complete opposite of the bad ass warrior archetype that should have been born from nomads. Maybe that's why he joined Fate's harem in the first place. Couldn't fit in back home. Had Fate being picking misfits for her husbandos instead of primo studs?
All this is very interesting, but the map raises a troubling question. The Voice had said after the precursors fell into barbarism and general unpleasantness, it had been forced to separate them into three groups, housed in separate dimensions. But the map clearly shows that its the sea, along with a thin layer of mist, that separates the three groups from each other. Fate had clearly managed to recruit her three cucks as well, so crossing to the various sectors using medieval technology is possible. And that leads to another inconvenient question.
Why can't the P5 lob its nukes at heaven or hell? Earth, Heaven and hell are all on the same planet. So what's the problem?
The answer is obvious. The Voice had mentioned dimensional barriers placed between the 'worlds' before and that the P5's ICBMs would be able to burrow through a barrier weakened by Salvation. So it stands to reason that it is The Voice that has been preventing the P5 from using its nuclear arsenal freely. But is that the whole story?
I scrunch my eyebrows together and try to work the facts out. The barriers between heaven, hell and earth have already been weakened. The Millennium War is proof of that. The Voice had also admitted that it feared Salvation because it would completely drop the dimensional barriers resulting in total war between all the factions breaking out. But there's also the inconvenient fact that based on Naiberg's map, heaven has no population centers to nuke. Hell would not be genocided either, thanks to its terrain. The cities by the lava river flat lands would be destroyed, but mountains can resist nukes. Several demon population centers would easily survive.
Meaning the war would be bloody, but there would be no war of annihilation. The P5 would be wiped out, but the Legion and Host would keep doing their thing in reduced circumstances. And if the war of annihilation was off the cards, it meant one thing. What the Voice feared was never a war of annihilation, it was the dimensional barriers dropping and the war between the factions continuing without its input. From the fuss The Voice made out of possible nuclear strikes, it most likely feared the P5's ICBMs targeting something in particular. That was the reason why The Voice has been so insistent about directing the new great war from the shadows.
And then my eyes take in the northern and southern sectors of the map.
Separated from the rest of the world by the ocean, Naiberg's map displays large belts of mist, far thicker than what surrounds heaven or hell, forming a cordon around the northern and southern sectors. And residing in the north and south is a continent each. The northern continent is bare, except for tall pillars of bone and a blasted city not far from the coast.
But its the southern continent that holds my attention. Painted on the coast is a kneeling corpse of a man dressed in black robes and hood, his shoulders hunched inwards as a human, angel and demon stab their spears into the corpse's back. A massive sword lies shattered by the corpse's feet. Deep within the continent, its soil the color of blood, is a city sized skeleton.
The same skeleton displayed on the Fate propaganda poster with the army marching. Is this what The Voice has been trying to protect?
If the mist is The Voice's dimensional barrier, then that means that any army sent by Fate during the medieval period would most likely have failed to breach it. But modern ICBMs can pass through the mist, once it has been weakened by Salvation. And then I see it. Numbers. Written beside the drawing of the skeleton. Longitude and Latitude. Coordinates.
Everything you would need to aim a missile.