The partially restored throne sat before me like a rusted beacon in a pile of scrap that was somehow still lit. I brushed my hand over it and felt the dust and grime wipe away easily, but within it, something else was working. A function far beyond anything I’d ever seen, that was actually restoring the throne’s material from my touch alone.

I carefully and thoroughly worked my way over the throne until it was completely restored. The gold and black patterns turned out to be nothing but decoration, and the red stone it was engraved in sparkled like champagne under the light of a nonexistent sun. I stepped back and shook off my hands, even though they hadn’t gotten dirty in the slightest, then stared at the throne for a few seconds.

It was utilitarian to the core. Three slabs of stone connected to a stone block that served as the seat, all carved to give a sense of elegance even though there had been so little effort to give the throne itself a pleasing form. I summoned my interface and tried to identify the throne, on the off chance that it was some kind of item we could interact with. It didn’t even give me an error–the throne was a part of the room and nothing more.

“Weird.” I said and dismissed my interface. “The thing looks like it should be important, but I can’t feel anything from it any more. And nothing else is getting restored after we touch it, so why’s the throne important? Or is it just a red herring, and we’re supposed to be looking for something else?”

Jun shrugged. “I dunno. If we can’t restore anything else, then this thing has to be somewhat important. Hazards exist to be cleared, remember?”

“Using my own words against me. How cruel.” I chuckled. “Well, it is a throne. Only one use for those things, and we haven’t tried it yet. You want to give it a go?”

“Why not?” Jun said casually and stepped up to the throne. She turned to face me and nodded slightly, then planted herself on the red stone. I waited with bated breath… and nothing happened. “So… how long should I sit here before we call this pointless?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. The throne was a throne. People sat in them. There really wasn’t much else anyone could do with them, except for ordering around subjects or listening to proposals. And we were the only people here, so unless Jun was supposed to order around a room full of ghosts, there wasn’t much else to do.

Still, no point in crossing something off just because it was nonsensical. “Maybe try giving an order? See if that does anything?”

Jun leaned on her elbow and lazily waved her hand at me. “Husband, I order you to stand by my side.”

I rolled my eyes and kept my feet planted. “Very funny, wife. Maybe try something that could actually work–”

My hand fell on the side of Jun’s armrest, even though I hadn’t moved one inch. I blinked in surprise, and the strange meshing of two sensations melded together until I was standing next to Jun with my hand an inch away from hers. She sat up in surprise and swiveled to look at me, then where I had been standing, and back at me once again.

“Did that actually work?” She asked in disbelief.

“I think it did.” I reluctantly confirmed. “But I didn’t feel anything activate, and there’s no notification from the system that anything happened to me. This must be some quirk of the hazard.”

Jun nodded in agreement and leaned back in the throne once again. She was strangely silent for a few seconds, then perked up and grabbed my arm. “I’m going to do something really risky. Be ready to admit defeat if it goes badly.”

I raised an eyebrow she couldn’t see, then nodded and sent Mortician a message of warning. “Alright. I’m ready.”

With a deep breath to ready herself, Jun set her hasty plan into motion. “I request an audience with the voices behind the hazard.”

The world shuddered. The mountain split in two, revealing a massive stain of nothing that opened up to a mass of pure-white eyes. I clutched my chest as my blood ran cold, and Jun’s hand gripped tighter around mine as I felt the same horror echoed in her. The pupil-less eyes burst into clear liquid that soaked the ground underneath it, even though there wasn’t any ground to soak.

The nothing snapped shut. I fell to my knees and stared up at a ceiling that was in perfect repair, but a glance out the end of the mountain showed that the world around us was still a blasted hellscape. Jun pulled my hand toward her and whispered something illegible, then gestured wildly at a pair of figures that now stood in the middle of the hall.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

One was the Staura we’d seen in all of the portraits. Except she looked younger than even the first one. She smiled kindly at us, but when she opened her eyes, they were blank white orbs that perfectly mirrored the ones we’d seen in the nothing. I bit my tongue to keep the retort in my throat, then took in the majestic figure that stood next to her.

The second woman’s posture made her seem far smaller than she actually was. She wore a flowing white dress without any frills, and when she looked me in the eyes, I felt like I was staring at something horrifically dangerous. The face of innocence, of a young child, scaled up to that of a woman’s. Yet it felt fake. Plastered on, to conceal something so much worse than I could ever imagine.

And the world around her was deathly quiet.

“Hello, you two.” The woman from the portraits said without ever dropping her smile. Her voice was a perfect match for the one that had spoken to us through the hazard. “I was wondering when you’d find one of the many ways to us. If you want it to be, this is the closest you’ll get to clearing this hazard in your lifetime.”

I tried to talk, but my mouth was far too dry. I closed my lips and forced saliva over my tongue, gulped, and stood on shaky knees.

“What does that mean?”

The woman–Acasiana Rambola–shook her head sadly. “This hazard is very much able to be completed, but I would not recommend trying for it. The… gift… you will receive for your efforts is not worth it in the slightest.”

She raised her hands for emphasis, and a thin strand of white thread shimmered into existence. Then another. Then another. Until the entire hall was filled with threads, all connected to the walls, and all connected to her wrists.

“I’ve come to terms with my imprisonment, but my predecessor had not. He tricked me into clearing the hazard, then left with a sort of manic glee that I knew would bring nothing but pain to the people of the all-world.” She continued and lowered her hands. “So I killed him. The quiet god and I have an agreement that lets me leave every now and again, during which the hazard goes into a ‘recovery’ state.”

The quiet god. Moricla. My eyes bulged out of their sockets as I put everything together, and then I couldn't take my eyes off the plain figure in the flowing dress. She was the last god standing. When all the others had been killed, she alone stood among the ashes. But… this couldn’t be the real Moricla. It was the hazard’s creation of the Moricla that had fulfilled a prophecy.

“What did you do the last time you left?” Jun shakily asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.

Acasiana tilted her head to the side and pursed her lips. “I’m fairly sure I went back to Sotrien to try and get an audience with the real Moricla, but I ended up giving a speech to some new recruits instead. Beyond that… I’m not quite sure. I start to unravel if I get too far away from the hazard, so my memories get shaky beyond a few days.”

Jun nodded to herself, then at me. “She’s the real one. Somehow, that’s the real Matria Acasiana Rambola.”

“As real as anything can be.” Acasiana chimed in. She patted the quiet god on the back, then pulled her into a one-armed hug. “And this is the fake Moricla, who fully took on the mantle of the quiet god after a whole lot of things happened on the fake version of Sotrien that ended up like this. She’s pretty messed up and lonely, but thousands of years of created isolation will do that to someone.”

“Thousands of years?” Jun murmured.

“Mmhm, thousands.” Acasiana nodded, then paused as the quiet god gently put a hand on her shoulder. The mask of innocence melted away, and in its place, I could only see pure disdain for everything. Everything except for Acasiana and–somehow–us. “Actually, she says it was more like tens of thousands of years. The hazard existed for thousands of years before anyone found it, which I don’t really understand how that works, but I’m not going to doubt someone who lived through it.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The prize for clearing this hazard was eternal servitude, and you could only get out of it by making someone else take your place. So why was there an endless march to get to the mountain in the first place? Why were the summon spheres there if we weren’t supposed to use them? Why… wait. Acasiana said she was fine with her predicament. How the fuck was that true?

“How are you fine with being a slave?” I asked without any tact, which in hindsight, was probably not how I was supposed to talk in front of a god–fake or not. “How long have you been here, anyway?”

Acasiana tapped her lip in thought. “Hmm… I can’t say. Two thousand years, now? Maybe a little more? Eh, it doesn’t really matter; I’ve found a lot of ways to entertain myself with all the power this place generates. Virtual reality goes a long way, and all I have to do is play the part of hazard administrator every now and again.”

“Virtual reality. So you’re not just… sitting here bored for thousands of years?” Jun asked in disbelief. “How can you stand that?”

“I was always somewhat of a socially awkward introvert.” Acasiana laughed and pulled the quiet god into another hug. “Now I get to live alone with my favorite person, doing whatever we want to do, and nobody really bothers me. Except you guys, but I don’t hate you for some reason. Probably because you’re going to leave really soon.”

I still couldn’t believe my ears. This was beyond crazy. “Did you make the hazard infinite? So you can live with the quiet god for the rest of your life undisturbed?”

Acasiana's smile widened. And that told me all I needed to know.