Anna was currently doing what she always did when she was deep in thought.
Pacing.
To be fair, it was an impressive form of pacing, seeing as how she neither had a body to pace with or anything to pace on.
Anna had found that space was a pretty quiet place and the perfect thinking spot. Of course, bringing her actual body up here would be a hassle and pretty weird for anyone watching. So, her body was back in her flat on Earth frozen in time like the rest of the world.
She’d rewound time back before she had made her announcement, twelve days after she’d had her car crash. A week spent in a coma, plus another five days of ‘research.’
Time shenanigans can be confusing.
“I’d liked that poem too…” she suddenly grumbled. Pausing in her pacing she glared at Earth and tapped her foot. “Stupid humanity… always panicking… stupid…” She continued to grumble and curse. Eventually, she gave up and just sighed.
“You got too ambitious… while simultaneously being lazy.” She told herself. “Obviously you can’t just dump the fact that God is real, that he left, and also change the metaphysical laws of reality and not expect society to completely break down.”
Pinching her nose she sat down and muttered, “But it would’ve been so cool…”
Shaking her head at herself, Anna took a moment to just relax. She looked at humanity below her and as she did, she felt her mind reorder itself once again.
Anna started to consider different approaches. ‘I might need to take a more… hands-on approach to things.’ She reasoned. ‘Not as myself but in a disguise obviously. Select specific people to be heroes and villains… but then I’ll feel morally responsible for what they do.’ she shook her head.
‘No, let’s keep it random... but we’ll lower the amount of people that get powers, at least in the beginning. That way, not only will I not feel guilty for what they do, but there will also be more variety and separation from me.
‘I’ll also have to drop the whole ‘announcement idea’ as that definitely caused way too much panic. People need to be eased into this slowly. Also, doing it this way, without an announcement, will allow me to remain anonymous as the new god.
‘However, something has to be a catalyst for this change. If it just happens without a reason, people are just going to create a reason. So, something flashy has to happen that will get people’s attention and it can’t involve anyone as that would cause undo associations to form...’
Anna’s mind turned over as she contemplated. Eventually, her attention focused on Coeldisuim, her floating island ‘home’ that she mentioned in her grand speech.
Her idea back then was to use Coeldisuim as a way of taking people’s attention off of the powered and to prevent any direct connections from being formed between her and them. Like, people claiming that powered were her ‘blessed children’ or something. Instead, get them to focus on the floating island filled with alien fauna that they’ve been told is the home to a god.
That didn’t work, of course. Kinda hard to care about some island out in the ocean when the person next to you who just started blowing things up with their mind!
‘But I could repurpose it. If people notice that a random floating island appeared suddenly and then there are superpowers a little while later, well, somebody’s going to make the connection between the two. There will be expeditions and studies into the island to try and find the reason why people spontaneously gained the ability to fly.
‘Then once they reach my ‘home’ I can explain what happened… hell, I can keep the whole chaos god thing going. I just won’t be able to make my ‘grand announcement’ which, to be honest, wasn’t well planned out anyway.’
Thinking it over Anna couldn’t find an issue with her plan… wait.
There’s one.
“Shit. If I do this then I won’t have any control over things. I mean, in my first plan I could always just step in if I felt like it. If some super-genius was about to detonate an antimatter bomb that would wipe out the earth, I could just step in and kill him. No justification needed. It would just be a chaos god doing their thing, but with this plan, I wouldn’t have that. I would just be another... human... being…”
Anna facepalmed.
“I’ll just give myself superpowers! With those, I can become part of the super community that will inevitably form and I can step in if any issues arise. Plus, once people discover my ‘home’ I’ll be able to step in as Aureacentiamonus too.”
Once again Anna thought it over, allowing her logical mind to pick and prod at the plan to see if there was a glaring error.
She’d been doing this for a while when she facepalmed once again. “I can just check with the possibility map!” Summoning the map from wherever it had been, Anna started up a new tree.
Her smile slipped from her face as an issue appeared.
One of the timelines had died.
It was just the one mind you, but it was not a good omen. Feeling a pit forming in her stomach, Anna checked on what caused the death.
It was another strange phenomenon. This time a supernova had gone undetected… somehow... and the solar system had been seared of all life.
“But… what changed?” Anna asked herself in a daze. “I should still have time… right? How did this happen…” She trailed off when a possible explanation drifted to the forefront of her brain. “Oh, no.”
Frantically, she started messing with the settings on the possibility map. Her fears were confirmed by what she saw.
See, time between different dimensions and planes of existence isn’t always linear. The Earth and the abyss, for example, are constantly falling out of sync with each other. It requires the power of a god-like being to force them to stabilize. This means that millions of years could pass on Earth while only a second or two passes in the abyss, or vice versa. It also means that when time is paused on Earth, the abyss keeps going.
Can you see where this is going?
“So... when I stop time down here... nothing's stopping it from moving up there… that also means that when I rewind Earth… I’m losing that amount of time from when I started to when I rewind too… I already lost one timeline by rewinding only a few days... If I rewind years… good God…”
<( o )>
God sneezed.
“You alright God?” Hades asked from the barstool beside him.
“Uh, yeah… heh, you know humans have a superstition that if you sneeze it means that your loved ones are thinking about you.”
“Huh…” Hades took a sip of his beer. “My demons have a superstition that if they don’t mutilate their enemies horrifically then they will rise from the dead to claim their revenge.”
God just stared blankly at Hades for a moment before shaking his head. “That’s… interesting…”
“I know right!” Hades said with a dumb smile on his face. “I love my demons.”
God just shook his head and took a long draw from his beer.
<( o )>
Anna was back on earth and pacing again. It was much more frantic this time though.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“This is fine,” She reassured herself. “All I need to do is try and not fuck up like I did before… that's not so hard right?” She stopped and shook herself. “Get a grip, Anna. It may be the end of the world but you still have time. You just don't have as much as you thought.”
She went and pulled out her notebook full of scribbles. Tearing out a blank page, she started writing down some rules for herself to follow.
“Alright, so, one. No time shenanigans unless me or the world are about to be completely destroyed.
“Two. No revealing my true identity as the new god of Earth. Aureacentiamonus is the new god, not Anna Miller.
“Three. No using godlike powers as a superhero. Sure, people will explain it away in the beginning but eventually, they’re going to catch on. They always do.”
Reading her rules, Anna frowned, then added a subclause. “All rules may be disregarded if the world is in grave danger.”
She paused once again before writing another subclause. “More rules will be added as they're needed.”
Nodding her head, satisfied, Anna moved to her bathroom and taped the page to her mirror.
“Wonderful. Now, let's raise an island.”
<( o )>
Alani was currently working as a Hawaiian tour guide after she’d been fired from her previous job. Apparently, rich tourists don't like being told that they’re being rude ‘cause that bitch went crazy.
Also, being called a ‘Hawaiian tour guide’ was generous. She was a glorified boat driver. She drove them around the islands while the actual tour guides took them off and showed them around. She was left to sit in the hot sun and bake as she waited for them.
But, hey, it paid well.
Today, her charges were going scuba diving.
Despite the horrific damage the coral reefs had received during the last century because of tourist damage and the changes in temperature because of global warming, they had bounced back considerably well. The introduction of genetically modified fish and reefs had also made them arguably better than before.
Once the ban on commercial scuba diving that had been put in place back in 2056 was lifted in 2112 after the Reseeding Effort restored the ecosystem, thousands of rich and powerful had flooded the island chain. Shortly after them, came the rest of those that could afford it. Only now, almost ten years later, was the deluge finally slowing down.
“Alani! Get your head out of the clouds! We have customers!” Her boss, Hanale, shouted at her.
Almost falling out of her chair, Alani called back, “On it boss!.”
The rich tourists boarded, all of them chattering and talking to one another. Alani noticed a few that weren’t as enthusiastic as others, mainly kids and teenagers, but also some spouses as well.
Once they were all on and the boat was away Hanale launched into his speech about where they were going and the rules they needed to follow. Alani tuned him out, having heard the same speech a million times before.
Eventually, they arrived and their passengers disembarked with their scuba diving teacher, Steve, leaving Alani and Hanale on the tour boat.
“Why is it so fucking HOT!” Alani shouted as she fell back into her chair.
“...Because we’re in Hawaii.” Hanale said, looking at Alani as if she was an idiot.
“...that’s a good point…” Alani muttered while staring up at the sky.
Hanale just snorted before he went back to watching the waves with his binoculars. Why he was doing that? No one really knows... he just was…
Stop questioning it.
Alani rolled her eyes and closed them, trying to take a nap. It would be several hours before the tourists came back.
A few hours later Alani woke up shivering. Startling awake, she looked around confused… why was it dark? She got her answer almost immediately after her brain came up with the question.
Fog.
It was foggy.
It was very foggy.
Foggy enough that Alani had to struggle to see the other side of the boat only twenty feet away from her. It was a cold fog too. One you would find up in the north. Not near the equator.
“Hanale?” she asked as she searched for him. She couldn’t see him anywhere on the boat. Alani got the horrible feeling that she had fallen into a horror game.
“I’m here.” She jumped as she heard his voice behind her.
“Whats this fog, where did it come from?” She asked as she got up, still shivering from the cold. When she turned around she saw him looking up at something. “What are you looking at?”
“There’s an island.”
“What?” Alani looked around at the endless fog surrounding them. “Where? All I see is fog.”
Hanale just pointed up.
Alani looked up and gasped.
An… island floated above them. The details were hard to make out because of the fog, but the shadows cast by the sun behind it definitely made it look like a floating island.
“But... how? What?” Alani blubbered, confused.
“I don’t know. I was just watching the ocean as always when this fog popped up around us. I blinked and there was fog. It was originally so thick that I couldn’t even see my hand a foot away from my face, but it’s been slowly clearing up. About ten minutes ago I noticed that,” he explained and pointed to the floating island. “I had no idea what it was until about five minutes ago when I started to make out the shape. The fog keeps dissipating too, I think in a little bit we’ll be able to make it out fully.”
Sure enough, about a half-hour later Alani was able to make out more details.
The island was definitely floating. It formed almost an inverse mountain on the bottom. The gradual slope starting three miles up and continuing down to what couldn’t be more than a hundred feet above the surface of the ocean. The island itself seemed to be about ten miles wide from this perspective.
Alani could make out a thick band of green on top and various other vines and plant life scattered across the inverse mountain. She could see a few waterfalls that came over the edge of the island with their water turning into mist below them, creating beautiful rainbows.
She also saw what looked like a volcano in the center of the island, one that was just peaking past the edge. Around it looked to be birds flying… wait… no…
“ARE THOSE FUCKING DRAGONS!” Alani screamed.
“Yep,” Hanale confirmed with his binoculars. “Those are fucking dragons.”
“WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING!?”
“I don’t know but we should probably collect our customers and head back.”
“WHY!”
Hanale calmly lowered his binoculars, turned, and made eye contact with the frazzled Alani. “Because I think I saw one of them coming this way.”
<( o )>
The first day after the island’s appearance was relatively tame. The news needed time to travel, and more importantly believed, before it hit mainstream. This was also helped by the time that it appeared it was pretty late in the day already. So, it was already night when the news really started circulating. So, besides the navy scrambling to put up a blockade around the island, nothing much happened worldwide.
The day after was when the media exploded.
Every single news station the world over talked about the new flying island that had shown up out of a mysterious fog bank. The talking heads talked and the people listened. A variety of unproven theories were created and discussed. All the way from secret government technology to aliens conducting an experiment. After an entire day though, even professionals were running out of things to talk about.
Then the news that dragons were sighted was leaked and the next day was chaos. Not physical chaos mind you, media chaos. Which is arguably worse.
It was definitely more annoying.
With the addition of supposedly mythical creatures being confirmed, a whole new avenue of theorizing was opened. Now, magical conspiracies, mythological time travel, and ancient technology was all the rage. This kind of speculation continued on for two more days before the professionals again ran out of things to shout about.
Then the island started moving.
It wasn’t very fast, only about twenty miles per hour, but a ten-mile wide flying island covered in dragons was moving. That’s going to make some waves… not literally... seeing as how it’s flying and all that…
Shut up.
It took a full week after its appearance for the media to finally calm down about ‘Coeldisum’ as the world named it. No one was quite sure where the name came from. It had just... appeared online. The media started using the name on the fifth day and it became common use.
After that week, the media finally moved on to covering other things. Though they still came back to report its current location and to update the people. Eventually, though, it fell to the back of people’s minds, out of their concern. They had jobs to get too after all.
Of course, there were those where their jobs were to be concerned about Coeldisum.
The scientists of the world were in... anarchy, to put it lightly. Everything about Coeldisum betrayed what should be possible. They were all running around like chickens with their heads chopped off, trying to explain how any of what Coeldisum is doing it’s… well… doing.
The US government was also in shambles. None of the ABC agencies were properly prepared to deal with the absolute shitstorm that Coeldisum caused. The closest thing they had was the almost joke division of the Department of Defense dedicated to psychic surveillance.
Back in the cold war, the US opened a paranormal investigation branch in the belief that they needed to protect themselves against ‘soviet mind control’. The actual branch itself was closed down not long after testing began but another one was soon opened up not long after. These psychic agencies flip-flopped between the CIA and the DoD several times before eventually being passed over to the Navy in the 2000s. Then it started being flip-flopping once again.
The end result of this was the Division of Paranormal Defence. A woefully underfunded, understaffed, and undermanned mess. The place that agents get assigned because they can’t be fired.
It was this department that the whole of the US government was now dependent on.
The end result was that while the DPD was scrambling to get their shit together and the rest of the government was waiting for the DPD to get their shit together, it fell to the navy to try and keep people away from the floating island filled with hostile dragons.
Something that was going to get progressively harder because of the fact that the island was slowly heading for international waters.