The Magician 43

The melodious voiced entity spoke. "It seems that the last elder invited by the deep magic to speak on behalf of this child decided to test our will workings, elder void walker."

The center dragon said, "It is clear that this Greater Reality approved destroyer decided to take this opportunity to enact some personal vendetta. It is of no concern. With none to speak and other duties to attend to, this ritual is en-"

"I can speak! Although I am not of the same tier, that never really mattered much to outsiders," a woman's voice echoed into the astral space.

Even as Orison's form twisted and began reforming into an electric blue eyed cut-out of reality, a collection of multiple versions of mammary glands coalesced into a young woman.

She smiled and said, "I'll make it quick... What is given to you freely by an outsider may not be used to erase your existence. In return, what you give freely to outsiders cannot be used to erase theirs... Now I don't have to worry about someone using you to get at my son anymore."

The melodious voice laughed and said, "I can lend my authority to make up for what she lacks the ability to grant in laws. The first instance of 'an outsider' shall be declared the 'Greater Void' and the second instance of outsider shall be 'all'."

The 'void elder' said. "So, my first invitation to one of these things was even an irregular one? Delightfully novel. I also lend my authority upon Elder Tribal Fey's adjustment of terms."

"For expediency's sake, I'll agree if it will end this disrespectful and perverse representation of sacred traditions... Yev, if you have the gall to hold another of these rituals for an inter-species b*****d, I'll have you stricken from the rolls." the center dragon said.

***

Dr Odd tried to use his artifact to return to the time point he had apprehended the strange black elven man and the comatose woman. The coffin held the key to so many new discoveries, he was willing to sacrifice all he had to retrieve it. Sadly, he could not.

After restoring his reserves, he attempted to use the artifact to return to a point before that only to find that he could not. With a touch more rest, he tried to use it only to find it didn't work at all anymore. It was as if the whole world had become subject to mid-dimensional law. It, in fact, had.

It was then that he received a distress call from the 'rift room'. The dial had exploded causing several injuries and the death of one Rowdies trainee that was on a trial by fire in the Plague Barrens. That was quickly followed by a slew of secret contacts from the UTF claiming strange phenomenon occurring in space.

***

"All done, Auntie Aurora. Nobody has to die or disappear now," the little girl said to the Second Triumvir.

She proudly held up a colored pencil drawing of two similar looking worlds passing each other. One falling as the other rose, side by side instead of on a collusion course. The older woman smiled at the girl and the girl's uncle who was trying his hardest not to rudely stare at the woman's bare chest.

"It's truth that it is in man's nature to be-" Aurora's words to Jay were cut short by incoming transmissions from 'The Weird'.

The girl ran up and grabbed Jay's arm with a distant look in her eye. "You don't have any more time to look at Auntie's jiggle bags. We have to go now."

Aurora focused back to the real world from her messages only to find that her two guests had disappeared without a trace. Soon enough, she had forgotten that they'd ever been there.

***

In another splay of existence, a soul wearing the appearance of a man on the cusp of middle age sat meditating on the border between the underworld and the heart of a world. That heart was fashioned from a blue sapphire looking stone and filled with the comprehensions of a world will that had grown rich from the many sources of law and essence it had been fed from. By the man's side was Jammers/Jimson.

"Pops, Flip-flox sent a messenger to say that Atamus needs to see you. It's urgent," the young man said with a heavy look of schadenfreude in his eyes.

Jammers was no longer the innocent, child-like creature he once was but a powerful being in his own right. His own journey through 'the maze' and having held the bulk wealth of Orison's 'everything' for a time had filled in the gaps that being coddled by Noxflora had left empty.

The man, temporarily taking up his old name of Al, said, "Well, lets go see him, then. And son, there's no need to make up weird nicknames for your ex. She let you go to keep you from becoming a 'dying god'. Don't know what all that entails but it sounds awful. Just honor the love you two had and move on to other things."

As Jammers shifted them between the different layers of his 'ex's realm, he said wryly, "Easier said than done when we're still living in her house."

The soul gave his son a saintly smile. "It's not going to be for much longer... Thanks for sticking around to take care of your old man. After this, though, it's time for you to get on with your own life. You've barely even got to live one of those yet."

Along the way, Father and son were greeted by the soul of a young woman wearing the likeness of a Plague Barrens sealed suit. She meekly handed over a ring with a black opal set in it and waited for her 'reward'.

The man checked the contents of the spacial ring and said, "You took too long to die. You barely made it in time. If you were even a few seconds later, all of this would have been for nothing. Report to the abyssal purification department for two weeks of rehabilitation... Well, what are you waiting for? Looking at you turns my stomach. And as a soul, that's quite a feat since it's pretty much only a decoration."

The woman walked on jellied legs with a watery smile, trying her best to look as miserable as possible to hide fearful excitement and anticipation. The man tried his best to keep a grim face while his son didn't bother in the least to hold back amused laughter, embarrassing them both. The man held no doubts that the recently deceased girl found a way to enjoy even that.

Walking into an empty room of Noxflora's palace, by request, 'Al' faced Atamus alone. "Hey there, Zeke. Having gotten everything you asked for exactly how you wanted it, was the result what you were expecting?"

Atamus' wooden face didn't waver in the slightest. "So the strategy was to give us both our wishes and watch it destroy us? Are you and Keita proud of your accomplishments?"

Al sighed. "I won't speak for my mother but I sincerely hoped everything would turn out just fine. I didn't believe it would but I DID hope it would... Let me guess, you want me to go and pick up the sh*t for Piran again, let him take what he wants and give me what he doesn't? I think history has proven how that will end. This is the last time, for both of you. And this time, it's on my terms."

The time traveling artifact turned person hung his head in weary defeat. There was a quality to it that was far more genuine than the one he had displayed in front of the astral dragon, Yev. It didn't manage to move Al much.

But even knowing the whole truth of the matter, he couldn't help but see a man who had tried his best for his child. It was, at its core, a selfless kind of greed that had prompted the man to do what he had done. Even though Al was heart sick over the amount of grief those actions had caused, he couldn't help but respect the motivation. He'd been left with the lion's share of the emotional capacity, after all.

Wiping the distractions away, he pulled the copied 'dragon orb' from the ring and placed a light spiritual mark on it. "Don't feel so down, Zeke. I'm more annoyed than angry. In the end, it's hard to say what was good and what was bad in all of this. Take some comfort in that."

***

In a dark in-between place, a towheaded boy and a redheaded boy faced each other. Because of how much entanglement lay within the two, it was hard to say which was Orison and which was Piran.

"Looks like I have an extra large helping of resources. I hope you're hungry, because I'm going to need a lot of help finishing it off," Piran said in a chipper mood.

Orison sighed. "I'm not here as your 'helper' or number two, kiddo. It's time for you to make a choice. Be the stone or be the flower, you can't pick and choose what you want from both."

Piran said angrily, "Why not? I'm willing to share. Don't be so pigheaded and selfish."

"Well if that isn't a crock of sh*t calling the kettle black. You're one of the most pigheaded and selfish little a**hats I've ever had the displeasure of having to deal with," Orison said, patience used up.

He let Piran rant and rage for awhile before he said, "Enough. It's this simple. Choose one or I leave it all for you and pick up what remains after your impending oblivion. This time, I don't have to take your table scraps and be happy with it. But, that point aside, the bloodlines can't strike a permanent balance with the deathless mound and the cancerous colon of a tower that sits on it.

"So, what's it going to be? Are you going to choose the flower and become the cute little fairy dragon you were always meant to be? Or, maybe you prefer to choose the stone. It comes with the desolate realm and all the Gnarly angst you can eat."

Piran sneered. "So you finally grew a pair and decided to plot against me the way my father plotted against you? I choose the stone. You're not going to take the bloodlines from me."

Orison sighed again. "If that's what you want. Then fine, but you're going to end up with the desolate realm if you choose the stone. I didn't lie to you."

"How does that make any sense!? I may not know everything that you might know but Pelentis ate the flower and Yev ate the stone," Piran said as he looked at his counterpart with disdain.

Orison rubbed his temples. "In the beginning, the fey noble found them both, ate the flower and gave the stone to Yev. We were born twins. Seeing the potential in it and the benefits the two spiritual items could give, Atamus went back in time and collected them before they could be found.

"Discovering that only the stone was useful to him and being fond of the maid, he took the stone and had Pelentis eat the flower. Once again, we would have been born twins but we were too much for Pelentis and she died. After that, he experimented around to find the best combination. The stone for him alone was the best for him... alone.

"Do you think that would stand with a dragon that could mess with time too? Yev might be 'courteous' and relatively fair-minded but he wouldn't let his student outright steal from him. The only way to get to keep some benefits for himself was to bring us back into the equation. After all, a courteous man wouldn't erase the existence of children for some mild self improvements, particularly when one of those children was his own.

"The most beneficial, not to mention most compatible, combination would leave the spiritual herb to the power couple and take the stone for him and the maid. The only rub with that was the herb's greater benefit to a woman and her next partner while the stone's improvements kind of... spread out vaguely and leaked what couldn't be used immediately to the child. It also carried a mysterious kind of ominousness about it, apparently.

"You know what he chose. If Atamus had left well enough alone there, it wouldn't have ended up the nightmare it became. He just had to try and pull more of the potency of the stone into the flower until he found the balance he could get away with. That's how you ended up being born a sentient gem and I was born with bloodline powers much weaker than they should have been.

"Once... a-gain, he could have fixed his blunder but Amoril was getting really tired of the stress being caused to its branches of events. He decided to leave things as they were because he didn't want to let go of the benefits he already had. Not too long afterwards, it became impossible to change that particular event because Amoril did something to keep time travelers from screwing with a point in time that had already grown fragile from all of Atamus' shenanigans.

"As mothers often can, especially a fey one in your case, Pelentis lovingly accepted you just the way you were and embraced your wonderful potential of one day becoming a sentient world will that would do her proud. Your father, not so much. Seeing your struggles, he began to be ate up by guilt. The more he grew to care for you, the greater that guilt became.

"So, what does he do? He manipulates events behind the scenes to turn Amoril against dragons. He convinces my mother to place us into an enchanted sleep to wait it out. He rips my soul out after cherry picking apart my potential, then gives that potential and my body to you. Yev gets stuck in the land of souls and your mother was a mushroom, kept in the dark and fed... well, you get what I'm saying.

"That brings us to the parts you know as well as I do. After all the tinkering, we're both incomplete... I should say WERE. I'm filling in quite nicely when I'm not being re-shredded by your dad's ongoing BS. Despite that, I'm not completely mad at him because a great deal many possibilities came out of it... for both of us.

Seeing that Piran looked ready to launch into a speech as well, he said, "I don't need apologies. I don't want restitution or revenge. This is between us now. Just pick which one you want and I'll take the other. We don't have time left for discussions and arguments... To be accurate, you don't."

Sullenly, Piran said, "Then, I guess the flower if that's the bloodline one. If this is a trick, I'll come looking for you later."

Orison ignored him. With his and Piran's agreement in place on what rightfully belonged to whom, all was brought into as good a balance as could be made.

***

The flash of light cleared. Several planar shards had merged into a hot mess but two boys stood in a boiled out pool at the center of a mud flat. The boy with blood red hair stood staring empty eyed at his dragon/fey orb while a pale haired boy with ocean eyes stepped away from a decrepit and slowly closing rift to the positive energy plane.

A house sized, reptilian head unburied from the mud and locked equally Caribbean colored eyes with him. "Now that you stand before me, I realize my error but I couldn't do again what I promised your mother even if I wanted to. It seems that Atamus has bested me after all."

Orison snorted. "You and Atamus working together couldn't best mom. She couldn't be here in person because... you know, her old body was involved in this. Much like me, she couldn't have cared less about spiritual bloodlines. They're more trouble than they're worth."

The boy handed the charged and comprehension rich dragon orb copy to Yev. "On behalf of tiddlywinks over there and myself, here's your treasure of equal or greater value. It's lightly used so that I could be at the ritual in... spirit and to get here. But other than that, it's good as new.

"Better than new, really. A souped-up tier six avatar of Gnarly masquerading as a tier seven sending has a looot of frigging juice in it. It's a shame that so little of it was good for people. Good for this reality and good for these orbs has to be good enough, I guess...

"I personally left a little extra something in there for you as well. You did a lot for little britches over there, thinking it was me, and I let you. You're not a half bad dad... for a dragon."

Examining the orb, Yev said, "Comprehension insights from a tier four? Are these supposed to be for me or a way to get some guid...ance. I've never felt the presence of any of these... Nearly a century's worth and left just incomplete enough that I can interpret them in a way that suits me better."

Orison smiled and said, "What was I supposed to do if he chose to be the stone instead of the flower."

Yev's serpentine pupils contracted ti nearly invisible slits. "Flower?... They were a set. Then the two of you... I could fix this completely."

The young mage said, "Not after the ritual. Did you not hear Elder Fey? Things might apply a little looser and wonky for me but there's no doubt how they'll work for him, exactly as they were intended.

"... It angers me that you abandoned the superior bloodline of a noble dragon lineage. You're just as scheming as your mother and I think I dislike you both," Yev said.

Frowning, Orison said, "The ONLY scheme I perpetrated was leaving my life and very future in the hands of MY son... Best damn decision I EVER made. And as for your superior bloodline, I could have its equal in all but age right now.

"I mean, I won't because that would be horrifying and kind of disgusting but...I could. I could be the counterpart to any sacred beast, outsider... freaking glitter farting Liza Frank sticker unicorn I can find. Suck on that...superior!"

The dragon said, "A hollow imitation. The only kind of entities that can do that are outer gods and Greater Reality makes them suffer every time they enter more than a tendril into reality."

Orison shook his head and chuckled. "I've already said more than I should have. It seems echoes of a dragon's ego are still lingering in my consciousness."

Certain unpleasant truths about Orison's exploits and the aggressive actions of Gnarly's avatar started ricocheting inside the dragon's large head.

Seeing that Yev was getting ready to leave, the young mage said, there's a weak and failing positive energy rift right there. I don't plan on sharing that information with anyone. As a courtesy, could you take Piran to HIS mother before using whatever way you have to collect it?

With a huff, the dazed redheaded boy was surrounded in astral essence before disappearing. With a jarring crackle of void in the mending plane, so did Orison, leaving the Dragon to his mud bath in peace.

The young mage chuckled to himself. It wasn't that the rift was old and weak like it appeared. He had switched out for the version that had been isolated and traveling with him. Without any pressure to sustain the spacial 'wound', the one on the plane would heal back closed.