The Magician 7

Once they had reached the museum, the magician burned some time intentionally looking in the wrong places until the old gentleman seemed to catch on and had his team start thumbing through the directory of acquisitions. It was still enough to keep the old man from holding a leather bound tomb. For a moment, it looked like the old man was going to make orison barter for the privilege of 'speaking' with the book.

The look on Their face and a strong touch of weariness from all the unaccustomed exercise had softened the old gentleman from pushing his luck anymore as he reluctantly made to hand it over. "That's not necessary. Nomy, I need to speak to your big partner. The outer god larva he got a taste of a couple centuries back or so is about to make another boo boo."

The strong glamour surrounding the book slid away to reveal a wailing face. A sinister feeling pulse rippled out from it. The environment congealed as if reality was a setting jello mold when a dirty and crazy looking old man stepped through.

"Finally ditched the kid, huh? Oh, looks like that wasn't the only thing you lost along the way. Sometimes I'm a little unpredictable but hey, you made it this far," the unsavory hermit said before cackling in a completely unhinged way.

He looked around and frowned. "I'm ten seconds too early. That's nine and a half too soon. They'll wiggle off the hook this time... Don't feel too bad about it, kiddo. It wasn't a bad try for your first attempt."

Orison gave a saintly smile in slow motion as a tremor went through the world. Half a world away, a strong isolation field of a floating city slammed around a beacon. The crazy old man gave Them a wink before disappearing and reappearing nearly instantaneously. Much had happened in that split second but the magician felt a mass buildup of spiritual debt owed to them for a short moment before it was gone again.

The crazy hermit cackled wildly and said, "Nicely played but you're too much of an amateur. As a consolation prize- what!?"

The hermit's power of causality slid around the 'event' Orison's involvement couldn't be removed from without making it fail. The only way that the hermit could feast on the entity was to give Orison Their fair dues. There was no dine and dash possible.

Before the hermit's craziness caused absolute rage filled negative consequences, Orison telepathically speed messaged, "I only want mine and my companions law comprehension and existence consolidated. Please be careful not to invalidate us completely."

As a malevolent sneer began to surface on the hermit's face, 'Nomy' returned from their own feeding and began nagging incomprehensibly at the crazy old man.

Orison projected, "Thanks Nomy. You're the best!"

The crazy old man's eyes softened instantly. "Do you hear that? You're the best! He hugged you and she called you the best! I think you have an admi- They did what?"

The dirty hermit looked at Orison in disbelief. "You and that boy gave lip to an avatar of old 'Black and Blue'!? Over Their treatment of Nomy, no less. I think I actually like you a little. You probably won't exist for very long but... Anyway, alright. A little good deed every once and awhile won't hurt me."

"Let's take this party to the Edges. I'm not so good on control and if I turn you to nothing there, I might be able to save you... Maybe. I'm pretty lazy."

After that, there wasn't much to remember. There was only a dim echo of barely recognizable feelings. It was a swirl of completely chaotic sensations as They were immersed in the raw maelstrom where everything and nothing met.

There was a sense of existentially important decisions being made as casually as picking where to eat for dinner. Reckless waving displays of control over the fabric and structure of Greater Reality crashed and rolled over Them to see what would stick and what wouldn't. Occasional scoopfuls of charged potential were slung at Them in an effort that seemed something between supernatural waterboarding and a jury rigging attempt to keep Them from completely disintegrating.

The only thing that was even remotely clear was the hermit's muttering conversation with himself before the magician woke up screaming silently. "That got boring a lot faster than I thought it would... Now where did I get them from again? Oh well. I'll just send them to where... It's not there anymore. Oh! There's a remnant dot of that little guy I just ate still over there somewhere."

With the last words of the hermit echoing through the sparse skeletal framework of Their shadowy pattern, Orison glanced around at the equally shadowy and ghostly surroundings. Nearby, a frozen tableau depicted the grizzly scene of a desperate life and death battle between an enormous black dragon and a wounded Norseman. Points of memory and intuition clicked.

That wasn't a Norseman. It was a Northlander named Bauldur of House Rettr. In truth, their fight had been over long ago. Neither had won. They both had perished but their souls were trapped.

Seeing the potential opportunity, Orison attempted to reach out with feeble healing to the once foster father of 'the boy'. It wasn't able to do anything other than give an outlet for the frozen scene to finally seep through. Aside from shunting Bauldur's soul to the side. Orison actively accepted what They could take while directing the rest through Arazmus.

The ghostly apparition of the Northlander saluted the magician before bounding off into the depths of whatever spiritual realm they were in. The departure of the man's soul into the pearly mists beyond awoke the magician's dazed mind to the current situation. A simple addition of a gratitude filled compliment towards the book had flung Them off the branching courses They had been shown in the kaleidoscope of possibilities.

They didn't know if it was possible to get back on track in any way but They were going to try. Picking up the insensible dragon blooded man, They began walking where the exit should be picking up strange bits of things along the way. Spiritual symbols of particular beloved items, filled with a lifetime of memories and attachments, filled in a little more of the existential holes within the two living travelers.

Despite the sensation of walking and picking things up, such a journey was more metaphorical than real but there was the sense of one ever present danger. When one left the afterlife, after finding what they came for, they must never look back. And as They neared the exit, there where many distractions that attempted to get the magician to do just that.

Some were very disturbing. At one point, Orison tripped and fell, dumping Arazmus to the ground and tumbling over the man. From that point forward, the magician had to pull the man to keep from looking back. And from time to time there would be a crunching sound, a muffled cry of agony or a shuddering jerk in the dragon blooded man's frame. They half expected to see little but gnawed off strings of gore attached to the feet They pulled.

Had They looked back, that imagined scenario would have become truth. But in making it to the end, the sacred rules of such a contest of underworld will and living soul were honored as they always had been. Never the less, a price must be paid for such a journey. The remaining shadows inside the key were taken in exchange.

Even still, in forcing such an exchange, the underworld lost again as a rush of existence essence filled in the missing spaces, restoring hundreds of souls and reconnecting them to Greater Reality. To shore losses, The underworld will made a cold calculation. The two escaping and victorious souls were shunted into the brightest branch of the strongest reality it was connected to in an attempt to invalidate the already weakened and shadowy figures.

As They staggered out of the dark bowels of a cave system, dragging Arazmus behind Them, Orison peered cautiously out of a cavern mouth into a lush garden. There was something familiar about it that made the magician shudder with dread. Seeing the powerful and complex ward formation on either side of the entrance to the cave that They had viewed for many years as a slave from the other side, the fearful suspicion was confirmed.

Panic was about to set in, caused by one of the worst 'dead ends' that the kaleidoscope experience had shown Them, when they saw a body floating face down in the garden's spirit water pool nearby. As soon as They saw the young Northlander features and the unique assassin's garb the memories of time spent on Amoril became just a little more clear.

"Venito!? But he should be... Wait, the old hermit's power is causality. It's not technically time travel to arrive before Venito was captured by the Long Garden staff because there's no breaking of causality," They said.

Orison started trying to figure out how to use this opportunity to its best advantage. "If we're in some kind of space outside conventional time and only bound by causality..."

They checked the Entanglement Key. Except one old and one new pact shadow out on assignment, there were no more shadows to be seen. Reaching out, there was one of the 'important ones' in the process of being reborn and a whole slew of others that were doing the same. Mixing in with Harley-Keita hadn't completely derailed Their own goals.

Pushing the bittersweet feeling aside, They began formulating a plan. After quickly checking on the unconscious Arazmus, Orison reached out with shaky and weak as hell telekinesis. They grabbed the 108th and only non-lethally poisonous samsara fruit. Normally, it would make 108 completely mundane versions of the eater that were spread throughout the lower-dimensions.

Those copies were meant to be bound to nothing more than an ordinary fate with a maximum lifespan of 108 years. But with the Entanglement Key and whatever 'acausality' funky resistance to the standards of cause and effect, the magician was about to create 108 hive minded individuals. Every one of them would be capable of taking the desired form of another and possess the comprehension granted powers of a tier four, seven steps into their climb.

If that weren't enough, they could be any 'when' that collectively wouldn't interfere with the rest of Greater Reality's unbendable laws of cause and effect. 108 one shot, 'technically not' time traveler demigod level existences were unleashed into the lower dimensions the moment Orison ate the fruit. Half of them were pulled to the magician's side to rush out into the garden.

Moments later, One unfathomably powerful being that guarded the stability of Greater Reality was a half a second away from erasing the hermit, insuring that such a thing could never happen. With a bored and careless wave of his hand, the hermit sent out his power to intuitively seek out and prevent the instance that would bring about his erasure. It was a fairly regular event for the insane man and a single swipe usually did the trick but it didn't this time. With two tenths of a second left to go, he sent a concentrated, intuitively guided pulse of power while asking Nomy for help.

The second time worked. A ripple that spread across thousands of realities, spanning the lower and mid-dimensions, caused subtle changes as a single event was undone. The event was so minor to the hermit, he wouldn't think about such a thing unless someone asked him about it directly. After the second hand wave, no one ever would. He couldn't be expected to remember something that didn't happen.

***

Al dropped his controller as he clutched onto the stuffed animal his ex-wife left and cried. Dust from the uncovered plushy puffed out from the sudden, forceful squeeze. Right as he felt a sneeze coming on, a soothing trickle of mysterious power flowed through him. Then, it was a torrent.

The very structure of his physical pattern loosened to accommodate the influx of multiple essences. Even his soul was undergoing a drastic metamorphosis. The man was paralyzed in the grip of a metaphysical flash flood. Moments later, Al was only a part of a being he had been a part of for some time in another 'what if'.

***

Orison sat stunned, holding a stuffed Cthulhu They'd never seen until memories of Al buying it for his wife overlapped the one of buying Nomy. The magician realized that they had messed up in a big way. It was beyond them to play loophole lawyer with cause and effect when They had no way to fix mistakes. Greed and desperation paired to turn a massive opportunity into a catastrophe.

Within, other than a couple of fruits and a large splash of spirit water, that would turn into a crystal shortly, was viewable in the small second layer of Their space. Inside the Entanglement Key, a single confused pact shadow sought around for the one they were giving patronage to before floating off to find a new one. As Their pattern solidified back into an older teenage boy, They cast out with the power of the key to find the connection to Amoril.

Several states away, a drunk young man's corpse laid on the front drive from where he had fallen off the roof of his parents' three story home, a clean rectangle of space next to his cracked open head. Drawing on the key's power, They pulled Themselves to the rapidly dwindling line the fleeing entity had created and flung Themselves through it with a second use.

The magician arrived in the astral plane-like shell that the outer god larva had abandoned before being shunted to Amoril. As if a film of super strong and stretchy cling wrap surrounded the lake house on the other side, Orison slowly slid away until They stood outside a barrier They couldn't cross. When the key wouldn't help them cross, They attempted to ghost and even void to get in but nothing worked.

Discontent to wait until the early next morning when They knew people could enter, the magician used the key to see where the people who They were connected to where. In the entirety of Amoril, there was only one. Orison calmed the panic. It made sense. The boy and his new soul buddy hadn't met anyone yet.

"Who are you? I'd prefer not to fight at this time. So, I hope you're not an enemy," a 'no nonsense' man's voice said.

Orison looked and didn't see anyone with mundane or Spirit Sight but They knew who the voice belonged to. "Why would I fight you, Zeke?"

"I don't believe I am who you think I am but many bizarre things can happen when manipulating the power I wield," a man who very much looked like Zeke said as he materialized.

Orison shook Their head as They remembered certain details. "Sorry. You're the boy's father. I'm on your side, mostly."

Eyebrow quirking, the man said, "I'm tempted to ask why only 'mostly' but I'm well aware of how manipulative and controlling my actions would seem to an outsider. If you are an ally, I ask that you wait for this important time to be over before being about your business. The situation is delicate and it's my last chance before the back up plan is used."

The magician took a moment to order thoughts and asked, "Are they too delicate for me to get a slave kid away from a gold elf on Granite Falls island? Better yet, can I eradicate the Domain presence on that island?"

The man who looked like Zeke said, "Hold on for a few minutes."

He went to the edge of the time manipulation dome surrounding the lake house and its vicinity. Within, the passage of time ran deep into the night until the next day. After reviewing, the man rewound it tinkered with a couple of subtle placement of items inside the house and began again. Three minutes and a little tight around the eyes later, he returned.

He said, "I'm going to have to let Piran accidentally consume this one. He's power hungry and trying to devour my son... There shouldn't be any problems with doing anything on this world. It's the last time I plan on using it. Wait for three hours after morning and do as you will."

A little hesitant to get too involved, Orison asked, "Is Lithus going to be saved?"

The man sighed and said, "If you want her spared, I'll bring her to you. I have to kill her master myself anyway."

The man walked into the barrier and returned a few seconds later with a confused Marshlander woman in tow. "If you're moved for her plight, please wait until three hours after dawn. Morrel doesn't kill himself until noon."

Orison nodded. "Are there any potential conflict of interests on Osomo, the dying earth or-"

The man interjected. "I don't need any of the worlds reachable by the astral bridge. Do you need the bridge for travel?"

"No," the magician said.

Oddly the man didn't go anywhere and after some explanation, it was clear why. There was a possibility of someone among the monks to notice Orison's existence and investigate.

To whittle away the time, Orison entered into a conversation with Lithus and explained some of the things that were most likely to occur in her near future. The idea proposed by Orison to enter into Takris' deep marsh family again was received overwhelmingly well by her. She wasn't a strong willed person with any particular desire for her life.

To Orison's surprise, They found out she wasn't pregnant and that her father was dead. The name didn't matter to the magician because it wasn't Rithus but that man was the father of the young Marshlander who originally knocked Lithus up. Apparently, the crazy elf cultist either decided to keep a virgin sacrifice on hand or actually managed some squeamishness of breeding siblings after line breeding two generations. Marshlanders were fairly resistant to the ill effects of inbreeding but not THAT resistant.