This was…

Well, it was laughable. Was this really what this creature had brought me here for, into this replica of my childhood neighborhood? To try and recruit me?

I…really?

I could feel my facial expression twist slightly as I tried to hold in a hysterical laugh at the thought, but the copy of Grey that stood before me didn’t react at all. I managed to keep it down, all the while my core ring indulged in the disbelieving laughter I didn’t let escape me.

What the hell was Rhazal thinking? What made it think that I was open to such a thing? I liked to consider myself a fairly loyal person, all together. I didn’t take any kind of notion of treachery seriously at all. What did I even have to gain from switching sides and joining up with a goddamned Calamity?

So I asked him.

“Why would I do that?” I asked Rhazal bluntly. “I like the life I’m building well enough here, so why would I jeopardize that to sign up with you?”

Rhazal didn’t blink at my question. In fact, I had noticed that he wasn’t blinking at all, nor were there any elements of other autonomic bodily functions on his illusionary puppet. Like…breathing, for instance.

“Because you are doomed if you do not,” He answered, just as bluntly. “Not one of you insects before me is capable of matching my might, and soon I will finish subverting the Portal Stone. When I am done, my mistress will stride the soil of this world once more, and with her will come her armies. None upon this soon to be blighted world can resist her. Kyron and Yorgun are long dead. The Humans and Dwarves are unshielded from her influence. All of Vereden shall be as lambs to the slaughter before her.”

I frowned slightly, noting those names. I had never heard them before, but I didn’t dwell on it. “How can you be so sure we can’t fight back?” I said defiantly. “We aren’t as weak as you think we are. There are strong people here. In the face of annihilation, we could band together and push you, and her, out.”

A flash of almost amusement swam through the imitation’s eyes before something unexpected happened.

A mountainous pressure, comprised of pure energy, pure Aether, fell upon my shoulders out of nowhere. The force of it was so strong, and so unassailable, that I was immediately driven to my knees from the power alone. I slammed into the false pavement of this manufactured world, struggling to remain upright using Tlazo’s staff as an anchor. I failed, and slumped over onto my hands as well. I groaned, feeling what felt like an entire ocean pressing down on me. I could feel my bones straining under the weight pressing down on me.

I feel my soul strain, too. In this place, I was more conscious of the crystalline tree at the core of my being, and I felt it creak and groan from the might.

As if from a great distance, I heard Rhazal speak again. “No, you cannot,” He said with finality. “Though I have slept in these years since the end, I still dreamed. And in those dreams, I have seen the state of this world. Vereden is weak and diminished in the wake of the Great War. You have no Paragons. You have no deities. Your Great Spirits are culled and weakened, from millennia of straining to hold the fabric of your world together. There is no defense that you can muster before the might of my mistress.”

The pressure bearing down upon me abruptly ceased, and I slumped down onto my front in its absence. I lay there gasping for a moment before I found my strength and struggled to my feet, using my borrowed staff to help me to them. When I was standing once more, I found that Rhazal hadn’t moved even once during his little show of strength. He just kept on watching me with a blank gaze.

He spoke again before I could find my voice. “It is possible, if unlikely, that one of your champions could manage to slay me in combat,” Rhazal admitted freely, seemingly uncaring about the possibility of his own death. “I am diminished from my long slumber and my absence from the side of my mistress. But that is irrelevant. Such a thing will not occur in time to prevent me from opening the way for her. Already, I can feel the faintest trace of her grace as if from a great distance, groping against the barrier that separates us.”

I felt a bolt of adrenaline roll down my spine at his words. I wanted to lash out at him immediately, to try and do my best to stop the doom that he described. But I still didn’t know how I was supposed to kill him, to my frustration. I could only hope it would become evident to me if I drew this out. “And what do you offer, Harrower?” I asked warily. “What could you possibly give me, to make me turn my back on all that I know?”

Rhazal leaned forward on his imitation of Elarux. “A seat…at my mistress's side,” He said, an empty smile on his stolen lips. “You would not be the first Precursor to serve as the hand of god. Your kind have ever made excellent weapons, when suborned from the yoke of the System. Do not look so surprised,” He said, at my obvious shock. “Your kind are mortals, after all. And mortals are subject to temptation. My mistress can offer you anything you desire. Nothing is beyond her reach. Power and riches beyond imagining could be bestowed upon you. Companions, esoteric knowledge and skills, mighty Artefacts. Nothing is beyond the reach of She Who Devours. You need only agree to serve, and it could all be yours.”

I frowned, still troubled by the thought that other men and women from Earth could have agreed to be the plaything of divinity. Not only that, but how Rhazal had directly mentioned the System, when he was from an age before the Initialization. “How can you make this offer?” I asked pointedly, pushing those thoughts away. “You haven’t spoken to your goddess in millennia.”

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Rhazal slowly shook Grey’s head. “I am empowered to speak for my mistress in these matters. She would not let opportunity escape her grasp.”

I was silent for a moment, letting his offer roll over me. A thought occurred. “What if…” I said slowly, drawing out my words. “I wanted to go home?”

Rhazal didn’t blink. “Elaborate.”

I gestured around me, to the recreated neighborhood from my younger years. “You created this place for a reason. You felt my attachment to these streets, these homes on Earth. I had another life here, before I was taken to Vereden. If I asked it of her…could your mistress return me to that world?”

Rhazal examined me for a moment. “Of course she could,” He said eventually. “You need only agree to a period of servitude, and my mistress possesses the power to return you to the world of your birth. Knowledge of how to reach long-lost Terra is not beyond her. All you need to do…is take my hand, and the pact will be sealed.” At that, the creature extended his false right hand in my direction, outstretched for me to take.

Only…

I had caught him in a lie.

While I was never intending to sign up with the literal forces of evil, I had wanted to see what their pitch was.

And it was all fake.

There was no way back to Earth they could offer me. Not for me. Not for any Precursor.

It didn't matter how 'long-lost' my old home was. The only way back was through the death of all the gods.

Maybe.

If Rhazal was offering a way back home for me…

Then nothing he promised was true.

I plastered a fake, eager smile on my lips and approached the long-abandoned Calamity. As I did so, I palmed something. Something I had long since had up my literal sleeve.

Doing my best to give nothing away, I paused for a moment before I could set my hand against the false flesh of Rhazal’s. “One more question, before we finish this,” I said evenly.

“Speak,” The monster said evenly.

I moved in a flash, activating everything that I possibly could in that moment.

Thorn Cloak for the protection.

Sylvan Vigor at max capacity, for strength and speed.

Grasping Roots, to hold the imitation in place.

And finally…

The Scintillant Blade, on the small throwing dagger I had hidden up my sleeve.

As crimson roots exploded from the asphalt to wrap around Rhazals legs, I reached out. Instead of his hand, I grasped the forearm of the disgusting replica of my mentor, and yanked it forward.

Right onto my brilliantly burning dagger.

It sank into the stomach of the shadow, meeting little resistance. At the same time, I gouged the blade upwards, opening a massive, gaping hole into the surface of Rhazal’s puppet.

I leaned forward until my eyes met the impersonations of my mentors. My emerald, against the black and silver of its.

“Do you feel pain?” I hissed to the monster responsible for the death of so, so many innocents.

Rhazal simply met my eyes for a moment, before looking down at the dagger I had buried deep into its chest. The rent I had opened up on the façade of its mouthpiece gaped open, revealing a mass of swirling, corrupted, black Aetherial smoke instead of innards. It stepped back from me, letting my blade free from its chest with a sound akin to a cork popping from a bottle.

A measure of disappointment entered the eyes of the thing that had tried to tempt me. “You have chosen…poorly, Precursor.” He finally said. Moments later, the entire facsimile of Grey that Rhazal had conjured before me…dispersed. It unraveled into a mass of black smoke that dissipated into the false summer air of the Texan replica I stood in.

In moments, it was as if it had never existed at all.

Silence fell on the neighborhood for a moment, before Tlazo broke it.

“Well,” The Lich said thoughtfully. “I’ll say this. That was, at the very least, bold of you. Potentially monumentally foolish, of course. But bold nonetheless.”

I discarded the tiny throwing dagger I had used to gore the clone of Grey off to the side, a frown crossing my lips as I looked around. I was ready for Rhazal's counterattack at any moment. There was no way this was over. “You know as well as I do that this was only ever going to go one way,” I said out loud, no longer caring about subterfuge. “It’s not like I was going to take his deal.”

“I suppose,” Tlazo said doubtfully. “But I must ask…did you consider it? The deal with the proverbial demon.”

I kept silent at his question. I don’t think there was a force on any world that could ever get me to acknowledge that I…had. For one short moment, my core ring had considered the idea of it. Serving at the feet of a goddess would have…simplified matters for me. I would have become a direct servant to a woman who would have shortly ruled two planets, instead of being the measly apprentice of a schoolteacher in a war-torn, weakened country. I’m sure Ixiah would have been able to grant me untold riches, and power, and whatever the hell I wanted.

But it would have meant spitting on everything that everyone had done for me since I had arrived on Vereden.

Azarus, for saving me from a life of slavery by accepting me into his home.

Bleddyn, for fighting at my side for freedom.

Grey, for everything he had patiently taught me.

Honoka, for the advice and healing she had freely gifted me.

Sylvia…

I couldn’t do that to them.

Which wasn’t even counting the millions of people on Vereden I would have been directly condemning, by signing up with a literal evil goddess.

I had chosen my path. And it didn’t lay with Ixiah.

Now I just had to find out what lay on that path.

Something caught my eye, as I was looking around. A curl of black smoke had emerged from the bright blue sky. Slowly, it snaked across the skyline until it had met the shining figure of the sun. In moments, in a reflection of the real world, it had covered the surface of Sol’s imitation.

The world plunged into darkness, before the light of the corrupted star shone down upon the world once more. This time, a crimson red.

The familiar light of the sun from my home had been replaced by Rhazal’s massive bloody eye, glaring down at me. In the moments the world had been darkened, it had changed.

The sky was enshrouded in the black mist and smoke that I suspect was his calling card, and the reproduction of my childhood home he had made to unsettle me had been…corrupted.

It had decayed. Or rather…rotted.

The homes had all fallen into severe disrepair and were falling into themselves, looking to have been suddenly neglected for decades. Withered growth had cracked the streets and sidewalks, turning them into so much rubble. Dust and the scent of death was now upon the howling wind, instead of the comforting smell of oak.

My own family home had been torn down, and in its place, there was nothing. Not a single timber remained of my childhood. Only a blank, lonely lot lingered.

A familiar voice pierced the apocalyptic wasteland that I stood in. A familiar one, no longer pretending to speak in a physical manner.

PRECURSOR.

NOW YOU SHALL PAY THE PRICE FOR YOUR HUBRIS.