Dei continued to study this variant of The Champion as they followed behind.

  His senses told no lies, this was someone else, but Dei also sensed truth when this one had claimed it was The Champion. It looked like him, and every universe only had one.

  The question he now asked was: could this Champion be unique? Or was this new side an inborn trait of every single one?

  Was this part of The Champion an orchestrated failsafe of some kind where The Champion put limiters on himself to boost other parts?

  Dragons couldn’t use affinities, not truly, but Cralok had proven they could hear and manipulate the echoes left behind by affinities, even if mana itself was out of their reach. That in mind, Dei wondered if this Champion worked with the meaning of Sacrifice to incinerate everything not related to combat on his path to perfecting Okrin’s death but that seemed… shortsighted, and out of character for what he knew The Champion to be.

  If he did that, wouldn’t he become a horrible protector for the people when everything was said and done? Not only that, but The Champion always seemed to imply he’d obliterate all other Divine Children, should they coordinate to launch a takeover on the Physical Realm. The power displayed here would explain that view perfectly, because nothing that existed could resist the ripples of The Champion’s attacks, not even ancient calamities.

  No, The Champions, all of them, knew that this version would appear, should he be backed into a corner.

  Which meant… The Champion had multiple personalities? It was the only way to explain the difference in identity and prowess. One half to govern, the other to kill. The king and his army. This entire time, Dei had spoken with the diplomats, but he now faced The Champion’s more lethal half.

  The more he learned of The Champion, the more he got the sense that the Primordial Child was… not a Dragon. Or at least, not the same as the others.

  He was unreasonably stronger than every other being in the universe, Separation considered him an independent party from the rest of Dragonkind, and he had two minds for some reason.

  Not to mention, his morals were perfectly aligned to encourage diverse life on the anchor world? What were the chances of so many coincidences? No, this spoke of an engineered situation. The Champion was… created? Well, of course he was, everyone was created, but Dei was pretty sure The Champion was designed specifically with life in mind, so perhaps by the Sun Primordial, as a guardian to the people?

  No, that couldn’t be right, because The Champion now guarded the descendants of the Earth Primordial. Not to mention, he’d said before that he drove off the Dragons from the anchor world, meaning they’d once been welcomed there.

  The Champion was designed some time after the Primordial War, specifically as a guardian to life, but by who? And why would they do that?

  Dei couldn’t imagine that the Earth Primordial had any right to control the descendants of the Sun, especially since he knew The Champion hid his positive opinion of her, so it had to be others of the Sun’s descent.

  He took a step back from his view as he realized he didn’t know enough to accurately guess who would do such a thing. There simply wasn’t anyone he’d heard about that was capable of creating The Champion.

  ‘It’s none of the Primordials, none of the other Dragons, and none of the Earth Primordial’s descendants… was it the First God? Grim mentioned that he had a fragment of the Sun Primordial’s power and later fell in love with the Earth Primordial, but no, it can’t be. If it was then, again, The Champion wouldn’t hide his admiration of the Earth Primordial, because she would be like… his step-mom.

  ‘It’s someone I’ve never heard about, a hole in history. There’s a figure somewhere in the past that’s never been mentioned- at least not enough for me to draw it as a plausible figure; one I don’t know about, that’s both strong enough to design the most powerful creature ever, and benevolent enough to make him good.

  ‘A terrifying reminder that no matter how many stories exist, It’s unlikely I’ll ever know the truth, because I simply wasn’t there.’

  It was also all-around terrifying that The Champion was, probably, one of many iterations attempting to produce the perfect lifeform.

  Or he was completely wrong and The Champion was naturally born as the most powerful Dragon, with a perfect moral compass, and two personalities that worked in perfect synchronicity.

  He snorted, ‘Fat chance.’

  * * *

  During their lazy venture through the fabric, Perumah seemed somewhat distracted, until she suddenly came to, her mental attention turning towards Dei.

  “How did you rid yourself of Okrin? He’s calling you a ‘defunct vessel.’”

  “You can still hear him?” Dei asked, alarmed.

  She scoffed, “Of course, I wanted to leave the window open for more potential trials or guidance. He can simply deal no harm to me.”

  “Ah, okay, that makes sense. Well, I got Ashvorn to surgically delete all memories in relation to… that thing whose name I forgot. Don’t tell me either. I can still remember the situations, like I remember getting pressed into the ground by the force of a presence, but my memory kind of stitches over any facts related to what caused it. I do know he was a Primordial Slayer though, because he commanded chaos and was very powerful.”

  “Okay. I must ask, do you want to know more about him, because Okrin just referred to him as something strange and I think you’d want to know.”

  “Well… as long as I don’t have a memory of him and don’t know his name, I guess?”

  “Very well. Listen to this.”

  She gently sent him a memory, which he considered pushing aside, but knew his curiosity would get the better of him. Without wasting too much time, he dove in.

  * * *

  “Really, it’s a neat little trick for me to follow my dad’s scent and find the scars he leaves on everything. Oblivion incarnate, the Primordial Suicide Note, is pretty hard to erase, and easy to find, who knew?! Even in death, he can’t help but be a pain in the cosmic ass, not that I’m complaining, ha!” Okrin said in a positively coherent way to Perumah compared to how he’d spoken with Dei.

  “Primordial… what? So he killed the Earth Primordial, at her behest?” Perumah asked, baffled. That was not what she knew.

  “Ehh, nah, he was too lazy for that. Too lazy for much of anything, really. No, y’see, Avium was all sad about ‘Winning’ the war and being the last Primordial, so she kinda gave up. Cosmic Parasites ate her for a time and she was too sad to do anything about it, so she decided ‘Let’s get someone to kill me!’ and promptly created a creature designed to sap her energy. She made him, and he did not listen to her. Y’see, she made him with all her sadness in mind, so he was crazy depressed too! Of course, I don’t think dad ever figured it out because all he knew was sadness, so he had no ambition and a wild tendency to stare at the wall apathetically. Avium really didn’t think his birth through, because she forgot to equip him with anything mentally. He just kinda did as he pleased, like a bigass toddler. Still kinda wonder how mom seduced him… or even why he humored the attempt and actually got her pregnant. Maybe that was a whim too? Gross. Either way, dad did exactly nothing to change the situation and didn’t kill the Primordial like she wanted, because he was too ‘Nothing’ to be ‘Something.’ Well, at least until I was born and grew up. I inherited half his power, and I had the mind to use it. The rest is history, of course” Okrin said, sighing wistfully.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Ancient history,” Perumah reminded him. “I hadn’t even heard of you until maybe a few days ago. What happened next?”

  “Really? Me? Forgotten? Damn, what do they teach you in school? Whatever, basically I ambushed my dad and chopped him to pieces. Or… tried. Well, I did, but in his last breath of existence, he finally felt a new emotion- Betrayal! And boy was he not ready for it. In a single, unmeasurable moment, he charged up an absolutely apocalyptic attack. Luckily, he never got the chance to fire it off before dying. Still, he’d finally used a fragment of his full, infinite capabilities, and it was kinda enough to kill the Primordial because he drained her of her life in all totality- she would’ve died instantly if I hadn’t gone out of my way to save her. Wasn’t easy either, but she fought to live- something about almost dying scared her bad, and I think that shook her out of her funk… I shackled her of course, enslaved her while she was weak. Didn’t work out for me when she sent some hunky barbarian to kill me and free her, he even ascended to Godhood in the process! I didn’t know that could happen til I was already dead.”

  * * *

  Dei was briefly drawn from the memory by the stacking revelations: That the “Primordial Slayer” was just the Primordial’s attempt at suicide; that Avium was literally the Earth Primordial’s name, and that’s why a bunch of planets were named that. It was mother Earth, Gaia, or some variant of that; and, for some reason, most shockingly, that Okrin sounded like a complete fruit when describing the First God.

  Dei didn’t intend to be so surprised, it just wasn’t something he’d really considered as a possibility. Really? Calling the guy that killed you a hunk? Ok man.

  * * *

  “How’d you come back?” Perumah asked, considering Okrin was most definitely not dead… though undeath would explain why he looked so decayed and atrophied.

  “Oh, easy, Grim didn’t really exist at the time so anyone with half a brain and a little tether could pull themselves back from the veil. Took some time, but I got back soon enough, conquered the remaining world and became some awesome tyrant, then a party of heroes sealed me away in the corpses of some freakish gnome things… an interesting experience! It was a good battle, and I even got to monologue. There was this musical number too about my plans and… I wonder if Loka is still alive? She was always a good playwright. I bet I could hire her to sing you my epic, it was awesome! Really brought out the best parts of my rise. There was this one time a city warlord kept sending people into my catacombs because he wanted my Starbreaks- the things that resurrected people at the time, something actually not of my own creation. There were these smokyotes that- ah, smokyotes, I remember those beasties, they used to do this thing…”

  * * *

  Perumah ended the memory there as apparently he lost coherence, and she couldn’t find a way to parse through what was left. He started going half a sentence before defining a term of the time, then starting a story of that term, then defining something else, so on and so forth until he said nothing. Frankly, Dei considered it a miracle he’d told the full story of his father, but maybe he was just in a good mood at the time.

  “Well, that was certainly interesting. I wonder if you can get any more out of him?”

  “I have been trying,” Perumah grumbled, “he spouts off ‘Prophesies’ that I am sure apply to people that have been dead for billions of years, mumbles half-remembered songs, and recites strangely thoughtful poetry when he is not mentally wrecked. I want to say the isolation drove him insane, but… based on what little I can glean from the stories…”

  “He was always crazy?” Dei guessed.

  “Yes. I imagine the unstable mental state was inherited from his father, though with a touch of bombasticity from his supposedly regular mother. He is absolutely unchanged by the march of time, for better or worse. No, definitely worse.”

  “Tell me if he ever mentions The Champion, too.”

  “Why him specifically?” she asked curiously.

  Looking at the scaled back, he said “I’ll tell you later. I still don’t really know if he can hear our conversation or not.”

  “Very well.”

  * * *

  When they reached the dimensional barrier to the anchor world, Dei watched The Champion float right through, much to his surprise.

  ‘Wait, are the fabric and the Physical Realm the same thing to Dragons? That would actually make an insane amount of sense if they can see and interact with both at the same time.’

  Despite there being only loose rock where the planet should’ve been, the invisible film still protected the general location. Dei was surprised there was any debris left at all, though perhaps it was mostly contained within the raw fabric, and only the slightest ripples made it to the world, and that was still enough to destroy everything.

  Opening the gate and stepping through, Dei found himself sighing in relief when he was greeted by a dark void with bright stars in the distance, rather than a bright void with dark stars. The night sky was much easier on the eyes than the fabric horizon.

  Dei watched The Champion pause among the light wreckage, staring out at what was left in a way that was subdued, even for this half. He didn’t approach, simply letting the Dragon have his moment.

  It was the first of countless mortal lifetimes that this dimension was quiet, he couldn’t imagine what was going through The Champion’s head now that he’d won.

  Eventually, the Primordial Child turned around and said “I have no further reason to keep you here. You may leave.”

  “Will we be okay to teleport using Void? We won’t get ripped apart by some force between universes?”

  “Impossible. Now that you are on the level of Physical Realm, you’ll have to contend with other Physical Realm obstacles, such as ritualists setting up teleportation traps between locations. Traps thorough enough to include Void as an element are rare, and none will be strong enough to hold you. If you do encounter such an obstacle, simply appear in the trap, shatter the constraining barriers, disrupt the diagrams, then teleport away again. Repeat this until you are capable of long-distance transportation, and you will be fine. Alternatively, you can take many short teleportations back to the universes you’ve left, in reverse order of how you left them, and you will encounter nobody.”

  Dei was half curious as to who would “Catch” him, but he was also incredibly tired. Nodding to The Champion, he said “Thank you for holding Okrin back this entire time, I don’t think anyone else could’ve kept the fight up with such fervent dedication.”

  The Champion nodded to him, and Dei could see he didn’t care about Dei’s words.

  He didn’t want gratitude, he didn’t value the opinion of anyone but himself. It would’ve been arrogant, but he was sure such a way of thinking was rock-solid against despair or loneliness. A mindset built to withstand.

  * * *

  Bouncing around their section of the multiverse, Dei reached the part of the universe they needed to, activating his mark Earth’s Champion left him to signal the sun Dragon’s attention.

  When he felt the connection open up, he didn’t wait to say “What the hell man?! You didn’t tell me he’d destroy the contract! You scammed me to seal Okrin!”

  This was, of course, The Champion that’d agreed to give him Command in exchange for doing as told.

  “Be calm, little union. I will honor the deal,” he assured.

  Dei calmed, but wasn’t ready to let go of his irritation just yet. “Why would he even do that then? What’s the point, if not to save other Champions resources?”

  “That is simply the process of a thorough examination; by breaking the construct into parts and examining each individual section, one may learn more than is explicitly stated. Now, do you want Command or not?”

  ‘A reasonable explanation, then distracting me with a reward… damn you, social version of The Champion!’

  He sighed exaggeratedly, but said “I guess.”

  The Champion chuckled, “Still, I must thank you. I did not dare hope for a peaceful resolution to Okrin’s escape. The patch may not last long, but if you do ascend, the Champions of the area will surely be able to utilize your finalized meaning to create a more permanent solution.”

  “Yea yea, I’ll try my best not to die too many times, and always come back when I do.”

  “Good. Now, go meet with your mentor in the Spirit Realm, she will solidify Command within your soul.”

  “Got it, and thank you once more for still honoring your word.”

  “It is only expected.”