About half an hour after noon, she stopped turning into zombies. Cecilia found the trick to summon no zombies. She just had to either stay still or move in a straight line for half an hour to keep zombies from appearing every time she turned.
Also, coffee kept raining on her head at about two drops per minute, even when the weather changed (it did every 10 minutes, from harsh weather usually to worse weather) to something without rain. The coffee gave her a boost of energy which helped a lot during the fight with the Dragon.
But now that the zombie hour had passed, she had an especially important job to do. Cecilia fetched Seth's corpse and dragged it to the slowly cooling wax. Kneeling, she lathered the corpse with the wax, in hopes it would somehow fix the dead men and bring him back to life. She wept as it did nothing. The wax was great at regenerating body parts and fixing the skin, but unless it reached the internal damage, it wouldn't fix punctured organs, broken bones, and, most important of all, wouldn't replenish lost blood or either restart Seth's biological functions. He had a lot of broken bones. Though the skin was perfect, the limbs and torso refused to assume what she knew as a normal shape.
Cecilia closed her eyes. Unable to even look at the body, she sobbed as her mind tried to cope with the tragedy. She felt the rocks underneath them cool down. The wax hardened. She touched her father's brow and left her hand there.
*
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*
Joseph floated aimlessly in the void. He sometimes bumped into something and eventually found food and water among the floating stuff he bumped into. He rationed it and prayed for forgiveness when he had to relieve himself in the void.
> > Miles traveled: 1,001
>
> > You gained the Voidwalker Perk. Move, perceive, and survive in the void.
He got his first Perk, way sooner than he thought he would. The black emptiness around him expanded and he finally found he was in a huge sphere, more than one kilometer wide. A few objects floated around. Clothes, a canoe for some reason, food, and even his... never mind. He even saw the smooth lid Cecilia had attached to her dimensional storage device, which meant she'd put him there.
Joseph swam in the void of the subspace and reached the lid. After finding purchase, he unscrewed it open and plopped out. He breathed the burnt air of the outside world, only to gawk at the destruction wrought around them.
The whole island had been flattened, wrecked, and then salted. Stale brine pools formed at the cracks and depressions among the rocks and the whole place smelled of dead fish and the ocean.
The young boy closed Cecilia's dimensional storage and wrapped the straps around his back. He started to walk around, searching for survivors.
*
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*
Horse clopped through the devastated island. The people's settlement was ruined. Everyone and everything had been burned down into ashes and bones. What a bother. It had to find someone to pass the human foal over. It dangled from its mouth, as Horse had no other way to carry the foal. It was too small to put on his back and he had no saddle to strap it into.
Human foals were a big trouble. Not only it was easy to trample them over because of their small stature, they also couldn't stand still.
"LEGGO me, horsie!" It screamed.
Horse ignored what she was attempting to communicate. Not only he didn't understand the foal's whines and snorts, it also didn't care much. He'd seen human foals before, and they take a long time to grow and get any kind of independence. Most often, the human mares just cooed and crooned whenever a foal made a vocalization.
Without much choice, Horse went to the place most destroyed in the whole island, the site of the fight between the Dragon and whoever was crazy enough to take on a Dragon.
*
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*
UwU what's this? frowned in a way only planetary cores could frown. It now had a proper name but not one it would choose for itself. A System message popped up, telling her that another ability was achieved. In less than half a minute, another one would appear.
She stared at her Status Widow (not window – long story there) and commanded. "Activate Nickname. I'll be called UwU-chan from now on."
"As you wish," the Status Widow answered. She wove a web and the name field changed.
*
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*
He floated in a void. Disembodied but not dead, Seth struggled to think. He hadn't moved on to the afterlife, so a sliver of hope still remained. He knew the Judges didn't act in vain even when their rulings seemed nonsensical. And he was somehow granted the power to recognize their influence. Right now, he was being held back for some grand purpose.
Isn't this a sign he was in the right? That despite his lesser peers screaming of ethical violations, eugenesis, and playing God, he was correct and righteous? Also, the idiots couldn't see the contradiction. Was God bound by a code of ethics? Of course not!
Seth was destined to ascend, to have his apotheosis and become one with the firmament. All of this were mere roadblocks on his path to greatness!
He would laugh if he had a mouth to gloat with. Seth waited for the next step. He didn't have to wait much.
A golden glow surrounded his spirit form. Seth felt a tug on his consciousness, just like the one when you are stirred awake in the middle of a dream.
He felt pain. His whole body creaked and popped as his muscles, bones, and organs were put back in place and fixed. Opening his eyes and glancing at his surroundings, he found his skin surrounded by a faint golden glow.
Kneeling next to him, Cecilia, his daughter, wept for him. Such dedication. His masterpiece was indeed perfect. Cecilia encompassed all of Earth's evolutionary paths and more. She hadn't still tapped into a tenth of the power and abilities he imbued into her DNA. It was as expected. The epigenetic locks he used to program her genetic code were a precise software that could react to any circumstances. If she hadn't yet accessed it, that meant that portion hadn't yet been necessary for her to thrive.
He remembered what happened and how he died. The Dragon. It was nowhere to be seen. He also couldn't feel the influence of the Judges. For some reason, they were busy with another thing.
*
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*
The Court was in session. Ten mighty Judges, among the most powerful in the Multiverse, gathered to pass judgment.
"The Defendant is Celia, the Worldwalker Witch of Genocide. She caused trillions of deaths, across dozens of worlds," the Prosecutor clamored.
The Court Clerk updated the record and waited. After she'd talked to the Judges in private, they agreed to stop interfering with UwU-chan – she noticed the planet name change but didn't comment on it – for a while and move on with the Court docket, least delays appeared in the Court schedule. That was unthinkable and not a possibility she'd entertain.
"Guilty!" The first judge declared. Their voice echoed through the entire courthouse.
The others followed suit. It was an unanimous verdict.
"Celia, you are condemned to eat a Dragon's 'lava cake'", the lead Judge declared.
A Dragon popped into existence, summoned from some world. The majestic crystalline creature swallowed its pride and bowed before the judges. "How may I serve, the great Wyrm rumbled."
"We need you to 'drop' a 'lava cake'." The Prosecutor explained.
In the Courthouse, the Judges and the Court Clerk stood supreme. Other court officials held lower ranks but the Prosecutor was second among them. In a few thousand years, the young attorney would even start to be considered for a Judge seat.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The Dragon nodded. It turned around, squatted, and then dropped a "lava cake". it was a "pastry" on fire. The woman bound on the Defendant's spot struggled and thrashed, refusing to accept her fate. In the Cosmic Courthouse, that never happened.
The sentence was carried out. Celia the Worldwalker Witch of Genocide ate her just "desserts" and perished.
*
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*
A green man ran for his life.
The rampant elemental energies of UwU-chan stirred and split. Holy and Profane powers repulsed each other and struck an island. That triggered an earthquake, prompting its inhabitants to run to the oceans. Elder Klatus was one of them. As one of the oldest awake inmates, he knew the true nature of these islands. They weren't landmasses, not in the same sense as in rocky planets.
No. These islands were a clan of ancient turtle cultivators whose duty was to support several planets on the firmament. Once they decided to revolt against their duties, they caused billions to die as they just dropped the planets that rested on their backs. The Judges sentenced them to death and exiled their bodies to UwU-chan.
And now, enough necromantic energy had gathered to turn one of them into a zombie. That shouldn't happen but the whole planet started popping zombies like crazy at noon. Everyone was turning into a zombie every time they turned around. Some were even turning into zombies after they turned into a zombie and got bitten.
It was chaotic. If it wasn't for the coffee rain that gave them a burst of speed half of the time, most of the inmates on the island would've turned into a zombie after being attacked by the zombies they turned into when they turned around near noon. Or if the effect didn't last for just half an hour. Some inmates had summoned dozens or hundreds of zombies.
Needless to say, the island was crowded with dead zombies. So much dead and death magic had to go somewhere.
Klatus' mind was a mess and he had a challenging time making sense of his thoughts. He only knew he had to chance a swim in the ocean or deal with... whatever was going to come out of a giant zombie space turtle.
He jumped in a boat with some other inmates, taking an offered oar and rowing like his life depended on it. A decomposed head popped out of the sea near them, and they doubled their efforts to row away from it.
The zombie turtle shouted, "brains" in the space turtle language. Given that they lived in the void of space, holding planets over their backs and separated by a few dozen parsec from their brethren, their language was half-psychic, half-hyperspatial. None of the inmates heard it but it surely scared the living shit out of their non-traitor brethren across the cosmos.
Several worlds reported massive turmoil as the turtles that held them all the way down shook and caused several strange phenomena, earthquakes being the most common of them.
Thousands of petitions made their way to the Court Clerk's desk, asking for sapientary aid, relief, along with a few reports of escaped dimensional inmates. The ones that weren't bad enough to be handed over to UwU-chan's care. At least one Demon God was reborn, forcing the Court Clerk to restart the clock (an actual clock) on his statute of limitations. Dozens of forms requesting permission to summon heroes from other worlds and to take control of trucks' steering wheels and gas pedals to better choose said heroes also arrived at her desk.
A lot of trouble, to keep it short.
The Zombie turtle, now awake, received the retroactive Perks for miles traveled. One of them was called "Thriller Night" and allowed her to reanimate all dead bodies in a certain range. All the zombies on the turtle's back stirred and rose from their graves (not really graves, but let's keep the mood).
That's when another turtle dropped on top of the zombified one. Lights strewn between posts went on, and a nifty inviting tune played. The zombie turtle, pushed underwater, screamed in frustration, causing even more of its living brethren to shiver in fear, in turn causing even more earthquakes in these worlds, in turn increasing the Court Clerk's workload…
A massive wave rose and pushed all the fleeing vessels away. The inmates on the boat rowed for their dear lives as they sped away from the most recent weird event in an extensive list of weird events.
"Oh! Yah-yay-yahhhhh!" Vocals with a heavy Mexican accent blared as three muscular bodybuilder "girls" in leather outfits appeared in a projection and started to pose with their square chins and broad oily shoulders.
Elder Klatus eyed the newly-arrived carnival suspiciously. "Keep rowing, guys. That ought to be a trap!" He warned. Klatus knew very well that kind of "trap" but it was a story for another day. The inmates on the boat agreed and rowed even more vigorously than ever, away from that.
*
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*
Cecilia wept. Her fish scales slowly fell off, revealing unblemished skin underneath. The webbing between her fingers and one of his feet shriveled and flaked off. Her gills sealed and the skin closed. Hair rapidly grew on her head.
"Oi! Big sis Cecilia!" Joseph's shout stirred her away from her grief.
She blinked, staring at the approaching boy. Cecilia noticed the round ceramic dumpling strapped to her back and her heart sank. Freezing for a while, she remembered she had put the boy inside her storage item… three days ago.
Bloody hell.
He seemed fine, though. Happy, even. While Cecilia burned with guilt, Joseph approached.
"Uncle Seth! Oh, he's sleeping."
"He's what?" She did a double take and stared down.
Seth stirred and opened an eye, immediately flinching and turning to the side as he rolled off of her lap. Cecilia covered herself and blushed. Joseph didn't get why the fuss. He was too young.
"Dad!" Cecilia shouted, brimming with joy as if she'd witnessed a miracle.
"I'm sorry!" Seth apologizes, still averting his eyes.
" You are alive!" She gushed.
" You're not angry," he stated.
"Why would I be? You died… how?" She blinked profusely, as if Seth would vanish like a mirage.
Seth tittered. "He, he. I guess I did. But I got better!"
"How?"
"The Judges are on my side," Seth declared with absolute conviction.
Joseph frowned but Cecilia was well aware of her father's megalomania. She thought it was cute.
Okay, she thought it was unbelievably cute. Like, swooning material.
Still avoiding eye contact or even putting Cecilia in his field of view, Seth suggested, "perhaps you should get a change of clothes?"
Her wardrobe malfunctions had wardrobe malfunctions.
"Here," Joseph offered her dumpling-shaped storage. "Trade for mine?"
She touched her neck. Joseph's locket was gone. She told him.
"Bummer. And yours didn't get any love. There's no dimensional clay in it."
"Perhaps there's some in mine?" Seth offered.
"Sure, lemme check." Joseph reached Seth's rectangular box and crawled inside. "Lots of wax in here!" His voice took on a cavernous reverberation. "Oh, here a lump of clay." Even deeper. " Wow that's a lot."
Seth exchanged a glance with his daughter, regretted it immediately, and looked away. Last time they were together back on Earth, she was ten, without any hint of the woman she became. Cecilia turned on her side as she mumbled an awkward apology.
"Wow, what did you do to it, uncle Seth? I've never seen so much clay made in three days."
Joseph came back with a handful of dimensional clay. It was less than either Cecilia or Seth got but more than he had. Seth stood up, his back to Cecilia.
"Hey, kiddo, why don't I help you make a cool box? Meanwhile, Cecilia can see if she finds what she needs in her storage."
Joseph's innocent eyes shone, "yes!!"
*
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*
Alone and behind some rocks, Cecilia checked her storage item. Just by touching it, she got a mental inventory of the contents. Frowning at the list, she chided herself for leaving a small child inside for three days and forgetting he was there. Then she opened the full lid, turned the item upside down, and dumped the undesirable materials, the proof of her negligence.
Fully clothed, she rejoined the men. Joseph now had a dimensional ceramic basket backpack that reminded her of Death Stranding, the video game. The kid was on cloud nine, grinning like it was Christmas morning.
"You also need new clothes, dad," she remarked.
Seth stared down at his garments, finding only the holes made by the Dragon's teeth. "I'm good. Just a little breezy." He stated with a grin.
Cecilia beamed back. She felt so happy she had her father back she felt like crying.
Seth approached and ruffled her hair. "You are looking so human."
Cecilia touched her ears. She didn't pay it any mind but her fish features had vanished entirely in just a few hours. "Perhaps I'm getting better at this?"
Seth grinned, proud of his masterpiece. " Of course, you are. You're my daughter."
With a wide grin, Cecilia nodded and blinked tears. She hugged Seth and buried her face against his chest. Feeling his warmth and hearing his heartbeat, she wept like a little girl.
*
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*
They wandered the island for the rest of the day, eventually finding the scorched ruins of the settlement. Or the spot where the ruins should've been. The Dragonfire had burnt all that t was flammable, then burned the few bricks used to make the dwellings, then burned the soil it was built on.
"I hear a creature approaching," Joseph reported, alarmed, and scared. If that Dragon he hadn't seen was as scary as he was told… The kid covered his eyes.
"It's a horse," Cecilia reported, using her improved eyesight. "And it's carrying a baby?"
The horse morosely clopped his way near the group, then dumped the small child, who was asleep. Cecilia dove to get the child before it hit the scorched ground.
"It's a girl. And… she looks like me?" She wondered in astonishment. Cecilia then raised a questioning glance at her father.
"See if she has a white spot on her side. If it’s shaped like an animal, then…" he trailed off.
Cecilia checked. The toddler girl, who was still asleep, indeed had a white spot shaped like a horse on her side. She stared an answer out of him.
"You might have had a sister or two. Older sisters."
"Oh, really? And why is my 'older sister' still a toddler?" The air quotes were easy to spot in her inflection.
"She might have died at that age." Seth stuttered. How unusual of him to stutter, Cecilia noted. "And the Judges brought her back too."
'A Judge did it' seemed like the default answer to any conundrum in this world. Coffee raining? Judges. Dragon? You guessed it.
Just to punctuate the affirmation, a tsunami approached. The shield thrummed to life, and everything else was as usual. Though no coffee droplets struck them in the time the shield was on. Cecilia added an umbrella to her mental shopping list.
Cecilia wasn't done yet. "How did she die, back on Earth?" She demanded.
" That's classified," he evaded.
" Don't you dare harm her now," she threatened. Cecilia loved her father, but she was aware what he was. She just fooled herself by believing he wouldn't harm her. Or the sisters she didn't knew she had.
Seth made a gesture, "Scout's honor. I won't."
" You better," her words carried great disappointment.
She noticed some grass bits near her mouth. Was she eating the same thing as the horse? Cecilia cradled her "sister" and cleaned her mouth with a cloth from her storage unit. The little girl resembled herself and Cecilia worried why she'd been cast into this world. And why Seth had obviously killed her.
"I'll call her Vanessa," Cecilia declared. She then glared at Seth, "And I hope you help me raise her, father. If you lack a reason, then to atone for your previous sins."
"Alright, alright. I promise to do my best to be a model father from now on," Seth swore. Cecilia knew his duplicity but she couldn't help but hope Seth would grow into a better person.
"Alright, dad," she softened her tone.
"This is not the first time the settlement was destroyed," Joseph said, trying to change the subject and defuse the tension.
"I assume this village was created to greet newcomers, right?" Seth conjectured. The haughty researcher was almost sure it was that.
The kid nodded. "Yes. People come here to greet newcomers and earn some miles. After a while, it becomes extremely dangerous to gain miles as the islands are only so big."
"Isn't it dangerous?" Cecilia asked with a hint of worry.
Just as everyone had forgotten about it, Mirror made its comeback. It just floated its way from behind a boulder to near Cecilia, framing the lab siblings perfectly. She stared at the mirror and frowned. Cecilia hated that mirror. A lot. She jumped away, taking Vanessa with her. The baby didn't wake up. Worried, Cecilia checked. Vanessa was breathing, had a good body temperature, and a steady baby pulse.
"It doesn't seem to want to eat one of us," Seth tried to help. "Especially not Vanessa."
Cecilia didn't answer. She just stared at the mirror, ready to run away with her sister at the first movement of the demonic object.