1.33 – The Indifference of Eternity

The world was changed. Her barricade, once the one thing standing between her and the oncoming horde of goblins, was gone. The goblins themselves, gone. Everything was different, and Rika had no idea when that change had happened.

She spun in a circle, trying to get some grasp of her new surroundings. Everything was vaguely familiar, at least in shape and orientation. The outlines of the canyon and mountains were still in place. Same with the massive bulk of what must be the guild hall, a short distance off. The slope beneath her feet, the sheer face on her left and the steep drop on her right—all of it matched.

But none of it was right.

The mountains, or what ought to have been mountains, were instead massive figures. Humans in shape, if not in kind, with twisted limbs and ashen skin. Some stood like sentinels, others hunched over as if pained. Some covered what should have been their faces while others turned in her direction. To a one, none had a proper face. The more she looked, the more she stared into a collection of endless voids, chasms where eyes and mouths should be. From within that black, bottomless expanse stamped onto the collective visage of these poor souls, eternity stared back.

The ground was covered with similar figures, but more appropriately sized. Each looked as though it were crafted of living ash. Like a mere touch would cause this strange world to crumble at her fingertips. She looked down, let out a panicked yelp, and leaped back. Where she’d once stood, another collection of figures. Where she’d landed, more of the same. Everything had been replaced. The mountains, the trees, the very earth itself were now rendered in the strokes of an ashen brush, painted with what she could only call a legion of the tormented. Each of their faces, a yawning void. A silent hollow echoing through the whole of the world.

What had taken the place of the buildings were melted slabs of some unknown material. They resembled in some disturbing way the drippings of a tallow candle. The town of Canyon Falls, replaced, melted before her very eyes. She turned away, heart hammering.

“Chryson, what the fuck is going on?” Rika asked again. She let the rising panic creep into her words, even as she tamped it down while it threatened to break free and overwhelm her.

No answer came, as was her Oracle’s habit when—for whatever reason—he was forbidden from providing one.

She glanced to where he usually floated a few feet to her side, roughly at shoulder height.

He was gone.

“Chryson?” Her voice somehow seemed even smaller than it had last time.

She tried to pull up her stats. Nothing. She tried to pull up anything, any shred of that instant surge of knowledge that she’d so quickly become used to. Again, nothing. She flailed against the sudden loss of class, of notification, of all that she’d fought for in her Trial of Destiny and beyond.

Still, she found only emptiness.

The world remained still. Still as though not only had time stopped, but all of existence had drawn in a breath that it now refused to release. The single burning eye remained fixed in the sky, staring down at her. She turned to it.

“Tell me what’s going on!” she shouted. Her mounting fear gave way to the one thing she always fell back on. Anger.

Her only answer was a return of that presence she’d first felt when the world changed, looming just behind her. She turned to the east, to where the presence covered the sky. The presence drew itself together, and Rika beheld.

Not any one thing, but merely the suggestion of such. A throne, a skull, a crown. They brought with them the crushing weight of something past her comprehension. Just glancing at the vague impression of those three objects threatened to crack her into a thousand pieces. Behind that, the unfathomable regard of a being far beyond her. Just by standing in its presence, the weight of existence threatened to grind her to stardust, to be blown about the cosmos as though she’d never been.

Rika shut her eyes against infinity and screamed. “What the fuck do you want with me?” She gripped her axe and shield, drawing from her meager arms what scant comfort she could. She wrestled against the weight of this creature’s regard. Forced herself to stand, to draw back her shoulders and lift her chin.

She forced herself to open her eyes.

A throne, a skull, a crown. The images, vague as they were, picked at some corner of her mind. A distant, half-remembered scrap of knowledge she’d once known. This was important. That certainty took root and wormed its way into her. Even as the impression faded, as the world around her twisted and melted away, a spark at the edge of understanding lingered.

Fight.

The voice was a voice, but no voice. A thundering echo of what she could only call a word, but was at once a command and a wish. The remnant of something greater, only witnessed, a whisper from beyond time itself. That single word contained more within it than the entirety of Rika’s existence. More than whatever fucked-up vision she’d been forced into could possibly contain.

Everything around her fell away. She pitched forward and barely caught herself as a goblin axe cracked against her armored ribs. Her instincts caught her, and she struck out with her own axe in return.

Tempo I x1: 6 seconds.

Jaws of Defeat: Minor increase to defense/magic defense from Resilience and Ward.

The goblin screamed as she took its arm off at the shoulder, but Rika only had room to feel profound relief. She was back in the familiar entrance to Canyon Falls. Her carts were still there, intact. Goblins still swarmed them, but whatever sojourn she’d just taken hadn’t been lengthy enough for them to overwhelm her. She still held the gap, and more importantly, she still had her class.

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“Chryson!” she shouted, blood still rushing in her fading panic. “Are you there?”

“I am,” he said, once again hesitating. “What happened? For several moments it was as if my connection to you had vanished. Like you were no longer…” his voice trailed off. She didn’t know what he wanted to say, and she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know, anyway.

She tried to speak, tried to recount what she’d just experienced. The weight, the terror, the warped and twisted landscape, forged of broken figures crafted of ash. She couldn’t find the words. In an attempt to convey it, she tried calling up the memory. “Can you read this?” she asked.

“I—no. There’s nothing. I should be able to apprehend your thoughts as if they were my own, but something prevents me. Something beyond me.”

Rika swallowed. She forced herself to calm, to focus on the immediate rather than the ineffable. On the rise and fall of her axe. On the song in her blood, and the fire of her resolve. Regardless of whatever fucked vision she’d just been pulled into, she had a town to defend. Her charge went beyond the quest. It was a responsibility to those she’d somehow brought this upon, to those who’d not asked for whatever mess she’d gotten herself into.

“Are you alright?” Erik called. He was a short distance off, hammering a metal sconce with an unlit torch into the ground.