Edge Cases

159 - Book 3: Chapter 24: S - The Trappings of Normalcy

Sev hadn't said it while the others were there with him, but he was worried.

It was strange that he was the only one the Roads hadn't changed for. Misa had been given a choice. Vex's road led up, whatever that meant. Derivan's path ended in nothing, but presumably there was something for him even there and even if there wasn't, he was the only one among them that could simply Shift himself out of that situation, especially with the mastery of the stat that he'd gained over the past month or two.

Sev wasn't sure exactly what he was afraid of. There was the idea, he supposed, that there was just nothing for him; that the others all had some sort of destiny waiting for them, and he had none.

Because you've given up yours, a small voice in the back of his head whispered. He ignored it.

The more he walked, the smaller the tunnel seemed to get. He was pretty sure it was just his imagination. It was easy enough to ignore the mild feeling of claustrophobia when he was surrounded by his friends, when they could laugh and joke together. They didn't even need to speak for him to feel comforted by their presence.

Walking down a dark tunnel alone was a whole other ballgame. He'd never considered himself particularly claustrophobic, but there was something almost suffocating about this. There was a part of him that feared he would be left wandering the Roads forever, walking down a straight tunnel with no end in sight; realistically, he knew that even if that were the case, Derivan and the others would come find him...

He sighed, and tried to force his mind to wander in a different direction, instead.

Misa, Vex, and Derivan had all made incredible strides in their fighting and magic. Sev had... certainly made some progress, but he didn't have the easily exploitable skills that Misa did, or access to the kind of magic Derivan and Vex could cast. He was a healer. He had his barriers, he had his divine spells half of which he'd been barred from using, for the most part and he had his connection to his Gods.

There didn't seem to be much of a path ahead for just healing better. He'd been able to figure some things out with his skills, had even gained a skill for [Healer's Intervention], which allowed him to attach to a target a small packet of divine magic that would burst and heal them when it was needed, effectively preventing death-by-health-loss, but it all seemed insufficient.

His connection with Aurum was stronger, too. He'd begun to meditate on that connection, allowing himself to draw more of Aurum's divine energy when the god allowed him to which happened pretty much entirely on Aurum's whim. He'd gained a new skill, even, from Aurum's domain rather than Onyx's. He didn't particularly know how he felt about it.

[Buying Time] [Active] [Grade: Max]

The more gold you use, the more time slows down. Dilate time by 10% for every 100 grams of gold per second contributed to the skill.

It was a weird name for the skill gold on Obreve wasn't really associated with wealth, so Sev had to assume that this came from all the planeshifted people from Earth that made that association. That was perhaps what had granted Aurum his minor Time attribute, even.

It was probably a good thing Jerome had apparently not had access to that particular skill. One the other hand, he didn't have Jerome's ability to transmute random things into gold or produce gold at will.

Or the strength to carry literal kilograms of gold around.

It wasn't that useful as a result, though it wasn't useless, either. He'd asked Vex about getting a spatially compressed bag of gold that was also enchanted to be light, but there had been a problem, in that the skill weighed the gold before it was removed from the bag.

Not an insurmountable problem, just an annoying one.

"You look like you're thinking really hard!" A young voice spoke next to him, making him jump; Sev whirled around to find a gold-outline Aurum walking beside him, like there was nothing unusual about this at all. The golden orb that passed for Aurum's head wobbled around slightly dangerously, and Sev was struck with the ridiculous thought that he should strap it on lest it fall off.

He didn't voice that thought. That was probably rude.

"Uh, yeah," Sev said, faltering slightly in his response. "I'm just trying to figure out... where I'm supposed to go from here."

Aurum nodded seriously. "The angels tell me it's hard for mortals to decide what to do with their lives," he said. "I'm sure you can do it!"

Sev snorted. "That feels a little bit condescending. Just a bit."

"I don't know what that means." Aurum cocked his head, then patted Sev on the back. "What do you wanna do?"

"I need to get a little stronger, I guess." Sev looked off into the distance into the dark that stretched into the tunnel ahead of him. "Or a lot stronger. I felt pretty useless during that fight against Irvis. If I had more options..."

"I know how you feel," Aurum nodded. "I wanna help Mr. Onyx, and all the other ghosts, but it's hard. I can't spend too much time where they are."

"You shouldn't be spending any time there at all, Aurum," Sev said softly. "I'm sure there are other ways you can help, but... you're young. You shouldn't have to."

Aurum was silent.

"Do you know how gods age, Sev?" he asked. "We normally don't. But if I spend time in the Void... my head feels a little funny afterwards, but I feel a little better. Older. Like it's erasing all the youngness I was supposed to have."

"That..." It explained some things, but not others. Aurum didn't seem to have aged that much, but didn't mean anything it was difficult to tell how old the god was to begin with. He was a little taller, maybe.

And it felt wrong, still. Risky. Too much to ask of a child.

Yet staying stuck as a child... that seemed like torture. He understood Aurum's position, strangely enough.

"There has to be a better way to age than that," Sev finally said. "Look, just let me look into it, okay? I'll look for someone that can help you."

There was no response. Sev looked around for the figure of Aurum that was accompanying him and found that he was entirely gone, with not even the slightest trace of divine magic left. Bewildered, he took a few steps back, tripping over a rock that most certainly should not have been there on the relatively smooth flooring of the tunnel

"Woah there," a very familiar voice said as it caught him. Onyx steadied him back onto his feet and patted him on his shoulders. "Careful. Don't want to hurt yourself in here."

"Onyx?" Sev stared. This Onyx didn't even look anything like the divine projection of Aurum had there was no indication that it was a projection at all. It just looked like the Onyx he had known, fully-formed and in the flesh.

Stone. Whatever. Same difference.

"In the flesh," Onyx said, and then chuckled. "Or stone. You know, same difference."

...This was bizzare.

"Right," Sev said, sounding entirely unconvinced. "What're you doing here? I thought you were stuck... you know, wherever you are."

"I am," Onyx said, inclining his head. "You've probably already figured out that I'm not really him."

"No kidding." Sev tried not to let his voice drip with sarcasm, he really did. It just... still came out anyway. Thankfully, this Onyx seemed mostly amused by the slight; he grinned at Sev, his eyes twinkling, and slung an arm around his shoulder.

"Let's walk?" he suggested.

"Do I have a choice?"

"You gave that up long ago," Onyx said mildly simple words that sent a deep and sudden chill through Sev's body, entirely unexplained. Onyx turned to look at him, his expression as deadly serious as can be. "But if you choose to take it back... I will do everything in my power to help you."

Sev stared back at Onyx's eyes pitch-black, glittering stones that they were and felt strangely comforted. "You're not even the real Onyx," he said.

"No," Onyx said with a shrug. "But that doesn't mean I don't know what he'd say."

They walked along the tunnel for a minute more; Sev's mind was spinning, abuzz with questions, and yet he couldn't settle on any of them. It took a further minute before he finally figured out what he wanted to ask first.

"What is all this?" he asked. "What's the point?"

"Unlike your friends," Onyx said, "the guidance you need isn't anything that the Roads can lead you to at least not directly. You already know everything you need to know, but most of it is buried deep inside you, hidden."

"Because I lost most of my memories." There was perhaps just the faintest trace of bitterness in his tone. "It doesn't matter if I know it if I can't remember it. I'm not sure that there's a difference between the two."

"Oh, there is," Onyx said mildly. He hummed a low tune as he walked, one that felt achingly familiar to Sev.

Two steps later, and he was humming along to the same tune. He didn't realize it until Onyx stopped and he continued, one note weaving into the other into the distinct melody of

"That's an Earth lullaby," he said. "Isn't it? I don't know what the name is, but..."

"But a part of you remembers," Onyx agreed. "Your skill isn't perfect. No system skill is, really; the system takes a lot of shortcuts to work the way it does. There's a reason it comes off as so poorly designed and so easily exploitable it's not designed to be functional in that way."

"It's designed to keep the world alive," Sev muttered.

"That is it exactly," Onyx said, "though even that is not the full picture. It was never completed, you know?"

"The system?" Sev blinked, staring at Onyx. "How would you know that?"

"How would I know that indeed," Onyx said with a shrug. "The point is that the guidance you need is within, not without; the Roads have nothing to offer you."

"Except this. Whatever this is."

"Exactly," Onyx said with a laugh. "You catch on fast, as usual."

Sev frowned.

Onyx was telling the truth, he was pretty sure. He was also certain that this wasn't the full picture that there was something more to all of this. There was a purpose to Aurum showing up, and then Onyx showing up; there was a conclusion that he was being guided to.

And he didn't really feel like being led there slowly.

"Can you just tell me whatever I'm supposed to figure out, then?" Sev asked, exasperated. "I don't want to do a whole personal introspection arc."

Onyx really did laugh, then. It was a deep-throated, from-the-belly kind of laugh; the man nearly doubled over, and Sev just stared at him, feeling vaguely disconcerted. It was familiar, at least he remembered now that the first thing he'd done that really endeared him to the god was make him laugh, exactly like this but he didn't think the joke was that funny.

"You know," Onyx told him. "I normally wouldn't? The whole point of the Roads doing this is that I can't; I'm just a specter projected from your own thoughts, with access to a part of you you don't have.

"But very conveniently for you the Onyx you knew would give exactly zero shits about rules like 'don't just tell him what he's supposed to do next'." Onyx grinned at him. "So the answer is this: You have a connection to Aurum, and that has granted you a skill. That connection by no means has to be restricted to only Aurum.

"The gods have been quiet for too long, Sev." Onyx's voice settled down into something more serious. "If we're going to stand a chance at this at all, we need to step up. And there are plans in motion to get them to do that. But all the divinity we've saved would be useless without an avatar to act through. Most divine connections with most clerics would just bleed divinity like water; it's an absolute waste.

"You, though? Your connection with Aurum doesn't leak a single bit. It's why he has so much freedom to act. So: make more connections."

Sev opened his mouth to respond, but Onyx was already gone, and the tunnel was opening up in front of him into a small clearing a tiny room, set up right in the middle of nowhere, with a bed and a prayer mat and a steaming cup of coffee. Sev raised an eyebrow just slightly.

He knew just where to start.

If Aurum wanted to age... who better to start with than the God of Time himself?