The mirror’s surface rippled like water, and from it rose an enormous figure cloaked in a robe. Its shape wasn’t humanoid, but boxy. It was formed of two rectangular prisms, one larger prism that formed its main body, and one smaller, more curved prism that lay not on top of the body, but in front of it, like the head of a shark. The robe billowed along the ground, obscuring what might lay beneath the archdeity’s immense frame, but Aolyn knew there to be several sets of wheels below both the body and the head, powerful weapons of vulcanized rubber more than capable of crushing skulls.
The robe’s hood hid the entirety of the figure’s head, but through the fabric blazed two blinding beams of white light, the archdeity’s very eyes lighting the world wherever they rested.
The figure deigned to speak, an alien rhythm of piston-pushing explosions that revved through the air like the growl of a predator, incomprehensible and frightening to the mere gods of Terra. Aolyn sensed more than a few of the newer deities mustering their divinity in reaction to the sound, perhaps in preparation to fight or flee, but they luckily had the sense to stay still.
“The great one asks why you have summoned it,” called an even-toned artificial voice. Aolyn looked, and for the first time noticed that a second figure had appeared with the archdeity, a simple green orb that glowed as it spoke.
“Venerable archdeity,” Aolyn began, speaking for all the assembled gods, “we come offering a portion of our divinity so that we may beg your oversight and enforcement as we create an addendum to our [Inter-Council Accord].”
Another revving filled the air, and the orb translated robotically. “The great one accepts the responsibility. Further, the great one offers to waive the standard fee of divinity if you adopt the trans-universe migration protocol as part of your addendum.”
Before anyone could respond, the archdeity revved a third time, but this time the sound wasn’t mere communication. Reality thrummed harmonically with the vibrations, and every deity present suddenly felt a power wash over them. It wasn’t the power of magic, nor life, nor soul, nor even divinity.
It was the power of existence itself.
No one had seen it move, but the archdeity was now outside the ruined colosseum, resting atop a high plinth of black stone that hadn’t been there before. From the double-yellow line running down the plinth’s center, Aolyn knew the stone to be of the same material upon which he’d died in that other world, struck dead by one of TK’s very own aspects.
The green orb glowed once more. “Begin your deliberations.”
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Twelve hours earlier…
Ryshagen was a quiet coastal city. Elsewhere in the world, a settlement of its size would barely qualify as a town, but within the [Frigid North], the term ‘city’ was well warranted. Stone walls, a great library, and the largest temple to Treskur for many weeks’ travel all qualified the city as a noteworthy site for the region’s hardened denizens.
The nights were long this time of year, and even during the scant few hours of daylight, one could never venture far from a hearth. It was said among the people of Ryshagen that not even the mightiest warriors could brave the midwinter winds for more than minutes at a time, lest their blood freeze within their still-beating hearts and they awaken as kin-devouring wights.
Such being the case, it was all the more amazing that a lone, naked, elderly man danced through the streets. His skin sagged, loose from muscle lost with age. His tusks were long, dull, and sun-bleached, but he had not the long hair of an elder. That morning, he’d been ritually shaved so that he’d have no shield from the elements.
Treskur — the region’s god of knowledge, war, criminals, and honor — stroked her beard. She watched the old man dance, the stumps where her own tusks had once been pulsing with phantom pain as the man’s steps reminded her of the ones she’d performed all those millennia ago.
She stood within the cold, fireless interior of her own temple. The room had no windows, but she missed not a detail beyond. She could sense all within a city of her worship.
She watched as the man danced first along the city’s outer streets. Families — bundled in furs even within their own homes — cracked open the shutters of their windows as the man passed, and shut them as soon as he was out of sight. They fulfilled their duty to bear witness, but none offered aid.
Each of the old man’s movements were firm, grounded. The snow melted in his wake, but sheets of ice formed over his skin with the end of each step, only to be broken by the beginning of the next. The shattered rime glittered in the light, trailing the man’s every move like stardust.
It took two hours for the man’s slow marching dance to finish its circle of Ryshagen’s outer streets, but the man continued without rest. He spiraled inward, completing his second circle just as the ever-low sun set over the horizon. Despite the shorter distance, his third circle — illuminated by naught but the light the stars and moon — took him nearly as long as the first.
The fourth circle, he never completed.
With one final stomp of his foot, the snow before him parted, but he remained still. After exactly seventy-seven seconds passed, four women emerged from the nearest houses, each bundled in furs and bearing torches.
They examined what had once been a man, breaking off the outer, opaque layer of ice with picks. The shell removed, they held their torches up and examined what lay beneath. The light of their torches passed easily through where there had once been flesh, bone, and blood.
Not a trace of living material remained. There was only ice.
“Honor!” The eldest of the women shouted.
“Honor!” chorused the second, third, and fourth.
Soon, the nearest houses took up the call, and then the houses beyond them. Like a wave, the news spread through the entire city until all of Ryshagen was filled with shouts of “Honor! Honor! Honor!”
Treskur nodded to herself. “Honor,” she whispered, and the word spread throughout the city, silencing the people’s cries.
The figure of ice that had once been a man stood straight at the god’s word. A spear of ice formed in its hand, and it danced out of the city, stepping the same steps as the old man it had once been. It ventured into the night to face the monsters that lurk there, never to be seen by its once-countrymen ever again.
“What was his crime?” Aolyn asked.
Treskur wasn’t startled by the other god’s sudden appearance beside her. She knew he’d been nearby for hours. Without turning to face him, she spoke. “I must give unto you some measure of gratitude for not earlier interrupting this most sacred of rites, but do you actually wish to know of my mortals’ affairs? Or do you simply wish to appear polite?” she asked, tone stiff and regal.
“Both,” Aolyn replied, tone relaxed, perhaps even authentic.
“Hm? The storied Aolyn the Deathless, first among all our world’s gods, has his interest piqued by mere mortals? And one of my mortals, at that?”
“Time away has given me a new perspective. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for the way I treated you all those millenia ago.”
Treskur kept her facial expression the same, continuing to stroke her beard. “Your gift for deception has grown. Even here, at a seat of my worship, I can not sense the lie in your words.”
“That’s because I’m telling the truth.”
“Ah yes, because no one saying ‘I’m telling the truth’ has ever lied before.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Got me there, Treskur!”
“What would you have of me, Aolyn?”
“I really am sorry.”
“Fine. What else?”
“You still don’t believe me, do you?”
“Of course I don’t believe you!” Treskur exploded, finally turning to spit her rage directly into his face. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost her guarded, overly formal tone. “I took your shit for ten-thousand-fucking-years, and you expect a half-hearted ‘I’m sorry’ to make it all better? You and Luna treated me worse than dirt, like I was somehow both beneath your notice and disgusting! I can’t believe an attitude like that can just go away, asshole. You could have stayed shattered until the end of time, for all I care.”
Aolyn winced. “I deserved that.”
Satisfied, Treskur huffed out a violent puff of air. The words off her chest, she took in a deep, calming breath. Then she paled, realizing what she’d just said to the world’s single most powerful god.
“It’s no excuse,” Aolyn went on, “but I think I’ve figured out why I was so horrible to you back then — why most of them still are. It’s because you attend ceremonies like this,” he said, gesturing in the direction the ice creature had run into the night. “The others and I, we used to say it was a bit too masturbatory, you attending these ceremonies in your honor, but I get it now.”
“A six-millennia dry spell makes you understand the need to jerk off?” Treskur asked. She supposed there was no damaging their rapport beyond what she’d already said, so there was no point in holding back. She expected Aolyn to swear vengeance or spit at her or something, but much to her surprise, the other god smiled at her brusque words.
“That could be part of the truth, but I think it’s more that we were lying to ourselves about why we hated you. Others still are, I guess. I used to hate you not because you were metaphorically stroking more than just your ego, but because you were too mortal.
“You were and still are a god of the [Century Council], yet you make time for your mortals and care about their lives, far more than any of the others or I ever did. You held onto who you were as a mere Terran, but it didn’t weaken you. In fact, it made you stronger.
“That ability of yours, the reality that you could hold on to what the rest of us threw away… It made us all — it made me — jealous.”
Treskur gave Aolyn a funny look. “You were jealous of me?”
“Well, I think the correct term is ‘envious’ now that I think about it, but yes. I was jealous of you. I was what the other gods wanted to be, but you were what your people needed. You were a constant reminder of what the rest of us lost in our pursuit of power. Seeing you made us hate ourselves, but rather than own up to it, we all decided to hate you. And again, for all that, I’m sorry.”
Aolyn’s smile turned playful as he spoke his next words, tilting his head and scratching his chin as if pondering the mysteries of the multiverse. “I will say though, it never helped that you talked all old-fashioned, like you were putting on godly airs. We could never figure out why you hate [Brackets] so much, either.”
Treskur snorted. “Because brackets are fucking stupid! And the whole ‘godly airs’ thing, it’s just a force of habit from talking to my followers. They appreciate the flair. But is that all you came to say? I’ve never known you to have only a single motive to do anything.”
“Got me again! I also came to give you these.” From his pocket, Aolyn took out a sealed letter and a ring.
“That dry spell must have affected you more than I thought if you’re asking me to marry you. Sorry, but my oath forbids it.”
Aolyn laughed. “It’s my plan for the meeting, and a magic item that might come in handy if all goes to plan. It will be up to you whether or not everything pans out the way I hope.”
“And what exactly do you hope to have happen?” Treskur squinted at him. “And what would I need a ring like that for? It’s barely powerful enough for mortal use.”
Aolyn tapped the envelope in his hand. “It’s all written down in here. Just read it over, and decide if it’s something you’d like to have happen.”
Treskur hesitated a moment longer, but sensing no magic nor divinity that could harm her within the proffered items, she accepted them and tucked them into the fur of her armor.
“And one more thing before I go,” Aolyn said, again pointing the direction in which the newly created creature of ice had fled into the wilds. “I’d still like to know what that man’s crime was.”
“His only real crime was the misfortune of outliving his liege and shield brothers,” Treskur answered. “You saw him. He was too old to seek an honorable death in combat, so he sought the honorable death of a criminal. He presented himself to the authorities, claiming he’d stolen a single fishbone from his neighbors. Before they could offer him a slap on the wrist, he insisted on this punishment.”
Aolyn smiled bitterly. “An honorable death.”
Treskur snorted. “What would a Daemon like you know of honor?”
Aolyn turned to the south, and Treskur knew him to be looking toward the colosseum where they would gather later that night, when the sun would set in that distant region.
“My people and I may have a penchant for chicanery,” he began, “but if a criminal can find honor, why not a trickster?”
----------------------------------------
“None of this makes sense!” a fish-headed deity complained, angrily shaking a parchment upon which was written Aolyn’s purposed addendums to the [Inter-Council Accord].
“I concur,” began a wriggling mass of moss wearing glasses, though it had no eyes. “And I mean it in the literal sense, not the pejorative. We literally can not understand what the document says.”
“You can’t?” Aolyn asked. He stood in the center of the colosseum, coolly surveying the assembled deities. He still wore his ridiculous get-up of ‘earth’ clothing, sleeves rolled up to display his ironic tattoos. He made no effort to endear himself to the crowd with either his attitude nor his attire, but perhaps he could endear himself with words.
From her perch in the stands, Treskur watched as Aolyn made a show of squinting at the parchment in his own hands. After a moment, he looked again to the moss deity. “Can you not read?” he asked.
…It seemed he wouldn’t be endearing himself with words, either.
The crowd exploded into derogatory shouts and expletives, all of them aimed at the deathless god. Treskur took no action other than to memorize some of the more… creative interjections.
“Please,” rang out Luna’s soft voice, “let us all be calm, as befitting of the gods we are.” The crowd quieted before she’d even finished her sentence, and Treskur was envious — or was it ‘jealous?’ — of the deference the crowd showed the moon goddess.
“Aolyn,” the unknowable deity went on, “all we ask is that you explain some of these otherworldly terms to us. You’d like us to transition the world into a ‘contemporary information age’ level of technology over the next three hundred years? None of us knows exactly what that means. We’re not as… well travelled as you. Please just explain for our benefit.”
Sol snorted derisively. “I doubt he even knows what he’s talking about. ‘Contemporary’ means ‘now,’ so how could the future be contemporary?”
Aolyn nodded with a smile. “Thank you for your comment, former-future-brother-in-law. I’ll be happy to explain. Long story short, I miss the internet, and I think you all would like it too.
“Long story even shorter, please allow me to communicate with divinity. Everyone ready?”
Before anyone could ask what he meant, a wave of his divinity spread through the colosseum, and with it came sudden understanding. All the assembled gods, Treskur included, were shown visions of a modern earthly society filled with bright lights, computers, and incomprehensible feats of mortal engineering.
“Like that trick?” Aolyn asked to no one in particular. “I learned it when… Well, the place I learned it didn’t actually do the whole ‘time’ thing, nor was it technically a ‘place’ either.” For the briefest of moments, his smile turned dangerous. It was only an instant before his grin returned to a placid, self-satisfied smirk, but none of the gods missed the subtle threat.
“There’s a lot you can learn in a not-place like that,” he said, as if half of the crowd weren’t shifting nervously in their seats. “You should all try it sometime.”
“Was… Was that real?” asked a skeleton wearing a tricorn hat. “Those bombs that irradiate death, were they real?”
“Reaching the moon with neither magic nor divinity, is it really possible?” asked a god with metallic limbs.
Aolyn stood taller. “If anything I showed you be a lie, let Truck-kun annihilate me where I stand!” he shouted.
The world’s pantheon froze, but the robed archdeity on its high plinth made no move.
“So,” Aolyn went on once it was clear there would be no imminent annihilation, “to save us all some time, let’s just define all the terms in the addendum by my common sense. Agreed?”
Treskur clenched her jaw. Within her pocket, she fiddled with the ring Aolyn had given her. The letter was already destroyed, but she remembered every word of the plan Aolyn had written there, and she knew what part he wanted her to play.
The entire meeting so far had gone exactly the way he’d planned it, but how the remainder of the meeting progressed would be up to her. With her next decision, she could either bring his plan to fruition, or she could tear it apart.
The other gods were all discussing among themselves, torn as to whether or not they should accept Aolyn’s newest proposal. If Treskur was going to influence events, her best chance would be to do so while they were arguing among themselves. It was now or never.
Treskur stood from her seat, but no eyes flew toward her. If it had been Sol or Luna who had stood up, the crowd would’ve instantly quieted, but Treskur — the ‘too-mortal’ god of tusked savages — commanded no such respect. Despite a level of divinity worthy of her seat on the [Century Council], some deities even leveled contemptuous gazes her way, silently chastising her for her lack of decorum.
“I object!” she shouted.
Within the din of the crowd, not everyone cared to notice her proclamation, so she flooded the colosseum with her divinity and shouted again.
“I object!”
This time all eyes turned to her. Aolyn too looked to her, his features a mixture of surprise and annoyance. “Treskur,” he said in a lightly mocking tone. “Would you please—“
“No, Aolyn,” Luna cut in. “Let’s hear what the wannabe wants to say.”
Treskur took a deep breath. With her next words, she could maintain the world’s order, or destroy it.
She made her choice.
Treskur — lone deity of the [Frigid North], a goddess of knowledge, war, criminals, and honor — squared her shoulders pointed an accusatory finger to the lone god standing in the center of the colosseum. “I can no longer stay silent! Aolyn is setting a trap, and I object!”