Trent Boehm
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OLD Chapter 210 (UPDATE AS OF 11/23/23 - These original chapters 195-210 will be pushed out to another future part of the book or recycled. New chapters starting at 195 are being posted after the original 210, and these original chapters will soon be removed. For now, skip ahead to the NEW Chapter 195 past old 210)
🕑 Added 2023-11-21 07:01:47 +0000 UTCChalgathi, Book 1 of Elysium's Multiverse will be released over the next 24 hours on Amazon. Ratings will no doubt start dropping in on Amazon in upcoming days, and early ratings are by far the most important. If you have any friends that may be interested in grimdark LitRPG fantasy and if you've enjoyed the series so far: please give them a recommendation! The early ratings count a lot in terms of where I end up on the list :) I would also appreciate any recommendations on the Facebook groups or Reddit threads, anything helps! Especially now that Primal Hunter 7 and Beware of Chicken 3 are also released at the same time (of course I'll be reading / listening to them myself haha)! Thanks again to everyone that has stuck around this long and hopefully book 4 doesn't disappoint.
Here is the link to Amazon in case anyone wants to share it with family/friends/social media: https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0CLL9DHGJ
Hope you all like this chapter and I wish everyone the best!
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Chapter 210
The fledgling holy god Petori still remembered the day its chosen was slain. Slain by diseased, blood sucking abominations. The thought still made him livid with anger, but he would have his vengeance.
That much was certain. The only question left now that his item was finished, was just how much damage it would do.
His ethereal body slipped through astral realms mirroring the mortal realm just on the other side of the great divide. He took care not to come into contact with other wraiths, ghosts or undead souls that may be taking refuge in the small budding empire of the Thanes. He could not be caught, or else his vengeance would amount to nothing.
But he was in luck. Even now the vast majority of worthwhile personnel were in the underdark, along with that giant snake and the armored demon who were spearheading the invasion against the dwarves. Petori had time, and he doubted that he’d be caught. Despite being a god, he now lacked followers and was destined for death after having cast his lot in the early stages of life against an opponent he could not beat. Other attempts at gaining followers had led to failure too, because this new world was full of other fledglings that fiercely guarded their territories - or the people he encountered simply lacked faith. Thus, this last gift to the elf would be his final act.
It had to amount to something before Petori’s once vibrant soul withered away.
Coming to a wide open yard where many children, both living and undead played, was a playground. It’d been been placed near what these people once called a ‘school’, but had been reformed into a processing and integration facility to try and coerce the younglings of the enlightened races to embrace undeath.
Blasphemy.
But despite his rising anger, Petori slid and slithered through the small legs of laughing, dancing, and running children until he found a little blonde girl with pointed ears huddled in a corner along the edge of the fence.
He’d been working hard on this one. She was one of the few that would listen, that would still hear his words when he spoke to her, and they often met during playtime like this when the adults weren’t around to sense his presence. Better yet, she had an in - she had access to Riven's home through her mother.
Poking a thin tendril of white mana out of the astral realm, he slowly touched her finger - causing the girl to giggle and smile upon making his presence known.
“Petori! You’re back!” Len said with a growing grin - using a small finger to poke and prod the little wisp that flickered in and out of her physical plane. “I was wondering when you would come! I was waiting forever this time!”
Petori inwardly sighed. It was sad, having to manipulate one so innocent and young, but in the end it would be for the good of the world. A final act for both he and the little elf child that would change the fate of this planet for the better. Lesser evils for greater goods. “Yes, Len. I apologize, I was making you a gift.”
The little blonde girl’s pigtails bounced and her eyes widened with a gasp of excitement. “Another gift!? You always give the best gifts! Mommy says I shouldn’t keep taking them from strangers, but she doesn’t know it’s you that is giving me these. What is it this time!? I hope it’s another hair pin! The last one was so shiny! But it faded away after a week…”
Petori chuckled. “This one won’t fade so easily, but there’s a catch.”
“A catch?” Len repeated, blinking twice. “What does that mean?”
“It means that in order to get the present, you have to open it in a certain place and at a certain time.” Petori said with a gentle, silky voice. Out from the tip of his wisp, a small white marble appeared. It glowed slightly, and then condensed and solidified when Len picked it up.
“It may appear like a small marble now, but it will bloom into something much greater.”
“How do I do it!?” Len asked excitedly, marveling at the small marble in her tiny hands with awe. ‘How do I bloom it!?”
Again, Petori laughed - though after that amount of energy expended he could already feel his soul slipping away and starting to disintegrate. It was a bittersweet moment, knowing that he was dying - but also knowing his object of hatred for what’d happened would no doubt die because of this final defiant act. “Well that’s the important part, Len. Listen very carefully now. Are you sure you can follow instructions?”
“Mhmm!!” Len replied excitedly with bobbing pigtails.
Petori internally grinned, and it would be the last source of happiness he’d ever feel in this world. “Good. What I need you to do, is to plant that marble in your mommy’s garden underneath that big tree next to the tombstone. Do you know where that is?”
“Yep!”
“Good. One day soon, when Allie or Riven - your mommy’s bosses get back, I want you to put your hand over the spot you buried it, and utter these words… When you do, your present will be big enough for all of you to share. It will be the best present you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”
***
Fimrindle sat, invisible along the edge of a gigantic cliff overlooking one of the countless battles that’d occurred here in the abyss over the millennia. Dying angels fell like starlight from the sky, while demons perished in shriveling balls of hellfire as darkness overcame them.
It saddened him. That he’d need to push himself this far in order to finally take one of many necessary steps to stop this endless cycle of hate.
Motionless, cross legged, scythe laid over his thin metal legs, he wondered just where the creators had gone wrong.
Were the creators even here any longer? Or had they abandoned their creations to the fate of the endless cycle? A cross between life and death, between light and dark, a dance between fates?
He would have sighed if he had lungs, but he did not. His head turned to look past the barrier of Gluttony’s cathedral grounds, inwards to where he felt two of three keys. The future, and the past. Then further on past the cathedral on another part of the cliff’s edge where rivers of blood streamed past, was the third key - present.
They were all so close, and yet all so far away. Even now Fimrindle could feel the clutches of Gluttony tightening around the everseer’s throne like a noose, and could feel the building power of Wrath as the original sins started to accumulate power in an effort to thwart one another when the final act finally came. The heavens wept, and in their arrogance the commandments had set upon the temple an eldrova - once again unleashing a world eater out of Pandora to prevent the tides of fate from shifting.
To maintain the ever present balance.
But it would not be long now that the balance finally broke.
It would not be long.
“Master… Father…” Fimrindle whispered, ignoring the huge figure of an ascendant A-grade archdemon as its body shattered on the cliffside next to him with a golden spear the size of a mountain protruding from its chest. “I am here…”
The void flickered, and the presence of the scythe came to be. Not the scythe in his lap, but THE scythe - the great spirit of death. It maintained the illusion Fimrindle sat within and held sway any eyes that may seek them, and when the shield was reinforced for a third time the hooded father stepped out of the darkness and onto the plane of the Abyss.
He was no more than a phantom, cloaked and hooded in the deepest of black. His presence was barely of note even to Fimrindle, one of his grim reapers, as all things died in the presence of the great spirit. Even ones senses should the original god of death will it.
A deathly chuckle echoed throughout their siphoned-off part of reality. The master’s voice was that of a whisper, a faint wind upon a fluttering breeze that sent chills down Fimrindle’s metal spine, with enough ambient power that would immediately kill most mortals if they weren’t death attuned or undead. “First, you possess an archdemon of Sloth. Then you manage to use your alteration abilities to lure the malignant bloodline to you, and somehow even manage to acquire a pseudo-contract that is non binding with the sister. Lastly, you manage to utilize their link to enter the temple of time and altar their fate so they don’t even realize how odd it was that you were there with him… and not here with the girl. I am… incredibly impressed. Despite your inability to use your full might in these forms, you still perform admirably as always. You have done well, grim reaper, and you are without doubt one of my favorites in the order. Update me on your progress, dear servant, as even my eyes are blocked from the ongoings within that temple. I may catch glimpses, but all is not as it seems when the three dragons shift the fabric of fate. The same can be said for Gluttony’s cathedral - are you able to sense where the keys are with your contract? Tell me everything you have learned.”
Fimrindle nodded, basking in the father’s acknowledgement of his accomplishments, then bowed his head. “It is unfortunate that I cannot enter Gluttony’s domain without unmasking my presence, no doubt his cathedral guards would kill me if I made myself known. For I do know where the three keys are - and they are all inside.”
Fimrindle’s scythe flashed left towards the cathedral of Gluttony where dozens of angelic bodies hung limply from gothic architecture, and two monstrous titans of muscle and tentacles shifted their great vertical maws while carefully watching over the entrance. “A broken man, nearly a boy, was given to Gluttony’s care by the keeper after destroying a foolhardy party of glory-seeking angels that tried to take the keys for themselves. A half-soul created from a child of the blood god and the shards of gluttony is inside contemplating on the meaning of the three bells. A stolen heritage turned draugr, wiped of memory and set against his own people after his empire was felled long, long ago is sitting along the cliff with the sister of the chosen. All three keys are there for the taking, even if we forgo Riven’s other half and choose to take Allie instead should the opportunity present itself - as she carries the bloodline too, but Gluttony holds them here for now until Riven’s other half is ready. Inside the temple, the keeper watches as the commandments muster an eldrova from Pandora. They send a legion of their younglings, tens of thousands of F-grade holy warriors to flood the halls in an attempt to flush Riven into the final chamber so he cannot finish his reckoning of the dao of time. They seek to pinch Riven’s main body and the temple defenders between two forces they cannot withstand, and have even activated the Seal of Nirvana in order to temporary banish all temple defenders that are out of the realm of F-grade. The keeper is in a brief stasis, and the armies of Wrath and Gluttony follow quickly on the heels of the angels after realizing the heavens are attempting to thwart the ascension.”
“Does Wrath plan on fighting Gluttony even here?” The Scythe asked curiously, tilting his hooded head to the side and looking down the row to where Wrath’s adjacent cathedral stood ominously without a single guardian in sight. “I do not see the cathedral worshipers.”
“I do not know.” Fimrindle replied hesitantly, taking a look along the cliff’s edge to where his master and father stared. “Perhaps. It would be foolhardy though, and an act of desperation.”
“You think Wrath will wait until the final moment like all the others then, even with all three keys present here.”
“I do.”
The Scythe nodded. “Very well. I will trust your judgement, as it has never failed me before. Tread carefully, and if the opportunity arises then act. If not, you know what to do. Inform me if anything changes.”
Fimrindle bowed once more as the portal to the realm of endless wails opened and closed - only catching a brief glimpse of other grim reapers on the other side who gave him nods of approval before the portal winked out.
He turned his metal head one more time to stare at where Allie and Thale were conversing with one another, and prepared the necessary skill. Always under promise and over produce, that was his way, so should he fail - he would not look poorly in the eyes of the father.
Focusing on Allie, and then on Thale, he used his contractual strings to pull at fate like strumming the chords of a guitar. One by one Thale’s buried memories snapped back into place along with minute suggestions that would no doubt blossom, and one by one Allie’s thoughts were pulled towards the swirling altar in the back of the temple where Lahn’s body was being stored.
It would not be long now.
It would not be long.
***
Allie sat cross legged along the cliff’s edge next to Thale, occasionally glancing over at the handsome armored draugr with a curious look in her eye. She wondered whether or not she’d made the right decision, coming here to put her life at risk while severely underpowered for a boy she had only known for months. Was it wise? No. Her emotions had gotten the best of her, and now she was just deadweight. Lahn was nowhere to be found to boot, and she’d let her overconfidence get the best of her.
Perhaps becoming attached to someone this early was a bad idea in itself. Perhaps she should go back to the way she was, that way she wouldn’t make such stupid decisions that put not only herself - but also those she cared about in danger. Riven was busy trying to keep her alive, while those on Panu were without her leadership during a tumultuous time and raging wars all over the planet.
She blinked, realizing that she hadn’t seen her temporarily contracted familiar, Fimrind…
Her mind immediately went to other things. She fought it for a moment, trying to regain that memory with her large amount of Willpower fueling her - and for a moment she held on. She even began to win.
But then a moment of distraction caused her to lose focus when a large imp splat against the side of Gluttony’s dome, and what little gain she’d accomplished in the mental struggle quickly vanished. A nudge prompted her to look back to the cathedral, through the open doors where a swirling mass of black hovered over an altar formed in the shape of the great maw. A familiar sensation came to her, just like the first time she’d set eyes on Lahn actually. It was the same sensation that’d made her question whether or not he had a bloodline at that time, but nothing had come out of it since then.
Yet here she was, having the exact same sensation, the same flavor to the ping of mana.
On her left, Thale winced and shook his head while putting a palm up to hold his helmet. “Something is… off.”
“Off?” Allie repeated with a frown, then looked back at the cathedral doors again when that same ping of energy echoed to her across the rivers of blood flowing down the steps and off the cliff’s edge. “What do you mean? Is the battle beyond the dome getting to you?”
She gestured to the invisible wall ahead of them that encompassed the cathedral grounds Gluttony claimed, which occasionally lit up and flickered when bodies crashed into it in the roar of muffled battle overhead. These creatures were so powerful, so titanic when compared to her and those on her own world that most of them could no doubt conquer all of Panu should it be unleashed.
The thought made her shudder. The gap was so clear, so massive, and these displays were all while being suppressed by the ambient mana of the Abyss. It was… incredible, and it put into perspective just how small she and her brother really were in the grand scheme of things. If these monsters could unleash powers like this here, attacks that split the sky for miles out or bombs that shook the earth and shattered the very air - what could they do outside of this place?
Thale closed his eyes with a groan. “Images… flashing images… It feels like my head is breaking open. I think these are memories? But… but it’s all so jumbled. I feel like this is somehow bad and I’m trying to fight it, but…”
Allie gave the draugr a comforting pat on his pauldron. “Don’t fight it, just let it come. If you’re getting your memories back, maybe that’s a good thing! You can tell me all about your past life and what led you here. I for one wouldn’t fight it, I’d want to know who I was. So don’t struggle. Relax.”
Thale frowned in concern, but took in a deep breath and shuddered - trying to calm his nerves as his shoulders sank into a relaxed position. “Very well. I expect you’re right. It hurts, but knowledge is power in the end. Though if you have any health potions I could use a few, I think this is actually starting to damage my physical body.”
Comments
Robert Rosenthal
I am little unclear on the geography/plot. iron scarecrow is manipulating ally/thale from outside glutton cathedral while clone riven is somewhere else....meanwhile in the temple of time riven prime and athela are in the treausury and lahn is in a storage box, but it seems from iron scarecrow that lah was somehow was transferred to gluttony by the temple of time off-screen at some time, where they kept him without knowing he is a key?
Dungeonborn
Thanks for the chapter and congratulations to your first release Regarding the chapter I am having trouble with it because while I know it’s grimdark and the stuff that’s normally attached to it it’s sad to see that Len is used as a pawn from a now probably dead god because he’s a petty little s***. Regarding the Reaper I’m at this point curious to see what their plan is and whether it is just good for their faction or if it is maybe good for Riven (even if he’s going to get hurt in the near future). Overall it’s one of the most intriguing chapters so far even if I’m dissatisfied with the scarecrow (not the story) at how he manipulates Riven &co but that’s just my opinion and I’ll have so see how it all plays out for everyone involved (maybe there’s a big plot twist coming and it all helps Riven and Allie to sever the ties with BMR?)
