Chapter 250: Chapter 249: Recovery And Resumption

As Carl arrived home, flanked by Kyubi, he looked back and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise what I was doing back there. I nearly killed him without thinking or hesitating, just for asking a reasonable question.”

“I know, Carl. I know. I’ll go check on the Ki-ko and Raziel, you take a break and catch up with your mums.”

“Kyubi… How do I tell them?” Carl didn’t sob, or even lose his breath, but Kyubi felt tears fall. “How do I tell them Sis is gone, that the girl they immediately accepted as family likely won’t be back in Mum Alisha’s lifetime.”

“You tell them to record it all, so she can read it or hear it when she wakes up. Now I need to be the bad guy because I know what you’re thinking. Under no circumstances do you try to get Mobius to speed up the process.” In truth, it was just a hunch she had when Carl tried to immediately continue, but the moment he went rigid she had confirmation.

“Yeah, I guess I should have known you’d figure it out. Can I ask why?”

“Of course. If he did, it might do one or both of you permanent damage. Past, present and future exist simultaneously, time is the doorway of consciousness to render it perceptible.

It’s how we send echoes and such back, but going to the future is dangerous, since it would expose your current self to your future power. It could make her sacrifice pointless.”

“Fair enough, I promise. Thanks for the heads up. Could have fucked up even more…”

Kyubi growled and pinched his ear, then asked if he needed reminding not to use that language in front of the kids, making him laugh as he said it was far worse for them to be getting involved in things.

She pinched harder and kissed him. “We can spend the rest of our time apologising for the big things and making up for them. The small things tend to be the most stubborn and you already have Ki-ko cracking her knuckles and naming everything in sight.”

Carl chuckled, then released her and plodded towards his mums’ home. The chuckle wasn’t fooling her, the way he was walking and carrying himself was the most defeated he’d looked in long time.

As Carl approached the door, he raised a hand ready to knock, but it swung open and Lillim stepped out to stand next to him. “You can stop worrying, I already told them, I’m disappointed. I specifically remember teaching you to lean on your allies when you aren’t capable of doing something.

I’m going to Alysse’s palace, don’t forget again. We stand ready, Carl.”

Carl had questions, questions he couldn’t bring himself to ask. He had gratitude he couldn’t express through the grief.

All he could do was cross the threshold in search of comfort.

Elsewhere, in a realm that had yet to serve its purpose even a single time, the future-self of Tiamutael laid in the centre of rolling grasslands looking up at a starless sky of pitch black.

Next to him was a slate that was projecting dozens of images in the air around him.

Pictures of Kitsunoko, Raziel, Squidge, Levi, Omedra, Carl, Klaire, Kyubi and others that didn’t even exist yet.

“I thought I’d find you here and now little brother.” A foot slammed into his chest, making him wheeze as he rolled over.

“Ki…Ko…I’m… sorry.” He continued to gasp as she laid down next to him.

“Your Mrs-to-be was worried, so of course your big sister had to slog however long it’s been and come check on you. What do you think the first thing I saw when I arrived was?”

“Auntie Sis disappearing?”

“Yep. It hurt a lot, watching her do it. No wonder it messed you up so badly…”

“Yeah, it was rough. I tried to guide myself down a better path, but I haven’t yet made a defining choice.

Anyway, it’s nearly time for the finale. I have to get ready, but you can tell everyone I’ll be back soon.”

“Miss the birth and I’ll make your life miserable.”

“Before you go. How is it I have pictures of Levi in the future?”

“A lady is entitled to her secrets little brother.”

As she spoke, she disintegrated into divinity particles, leaving behind her scowling brother. He reached a hand towards one of those future photos of Levi and a few tears escaped him as he expressed how much he couldn’t wait to see how much she grew.

Then as he dried his eyes, he turned his attention to a photo of Margo, dressed in a suit of grey and standing arm-in-arm with Sis who was wearing a white dress and so full of life.

“Dad is going to be so mad when he realises why I came back.”

He studied the photo, the way it was framed with Margo’s arm right on the edge whilst an unoccupied space was included on Sis’ other side.

Then Tiamutael took on his true-form.

It was entirely incomparable to that of his younger self, standing on two legs put him at a few kilometers tall, his wings each spanned the same distance from his shoulders to the ground.

His scales were a mosaic map of the universe, each scale holding an intricate map of a specific galaxy. The flesh of his wings were in turn a map of Nothingness and both they and each scale were framed by dense border of divinity.

As he flapped his wings he smiled at the sky, which was somehow no closer to him now than when he had been laying on the grass and then when he took off, he soared through air so fast that the air around him ignited from the friction.

Suddenly gravity magnified and his body slammed into the ground which became rubbery and perfectly absorbed the impact, then he heard Carl’s voice.

“Kind of figured you’d come to visit. Just because you’re older than I am right now, doesn’t mean you can fly around recklessly. Consider flight banned in this realm until I say so, be glad I didn’t tell your mums you would be stopping by.”

Tiamutael reverted back, then laughed at the empty sky after rolling onto his back.

“Dammit Dad, I haven’t been a kid for thousands of years, you can’t just ground me like you used to. Thanks for not telling Mum and Mum though, they would not let me off the hook as easy.”

Then Tiamutael stepped through. “How do I heal Nergal? Sis wants us to be a family, so I’ll do my best.”

“Your best isn’t good enough. I didn’t destroy his arm, I simply encased it in Nothingness, it doesn’t need healing but unsealing.

Learn to command Nothingness, then you can restore him, but tell me why you want to really?”

Tiamutael growled at his future-self, who chuckled back at him.

“I’m sick of it. Everyone being hurt, everyone being changed, everyone disappearing. I want Dad to be happy and Mum Klaire and Mum Kyubi, but they won’t be if they think I’m going to hurt people when I get mad like Dad nearly did.

When Nergal told Mum to leave us out against the squid-dragon after it nearly killed Levi, I nearly attacked him again… I don’t want to be that way!”

“Good, the first step is taken, but now you need to prove you have the motivation to see it through and practice our little heart out. To start with, try pulling just a piece of something, you’ll figure the rest out as you do.”

Tiamutael growled more, then left, leaving his future-self to feel hypocritical as he pulled out the slate and looked at another picture where Nergal was still missing his arm.

Before the present time’s Tiamutael had gone to visit his future-self, he had taken Klaire, Illerion and the Elder-gods to Lillim at Alysse’s palace.

Klaire had tried to push the topic of planning for the battle with Samael, but Lillim wasn’t having any of it until Klaire had spoken about how she was feeling, it was awkward and painfully pushy and Klaire didn’t particularly want to talk about it then and there.

“Klaire, if you don’t all get this off your chest, it will be a massive hindrance against both the mad prophet and Samael. Don’t forget we’re going to hell, the denizens and realm itself seek to press every nerve, scratch at every wound and will try to rob you off your morality.

Hell is the realm of orderly evils, if you go there with darkness in your heart, it will consume you, so talk.”

Alysse eventually tapped her on the shoulder. “Lillim, I know it’s a bother, but some people don’t like having heart-to-hearts in front of a bunch of Elder-gods they don’t know…”

Alysse’s words made Lillim pause, tap her chin in thought, then tell Alysse to run them through everything she had shared in her absence. Alysse was about to agree, but before she could, she opened a portal and pushed Klaire through before disappearing herself.

The next thing Klaire knew, she was in Lillim’s bar, being sat on a stool before Lillim went behind the counter and prepared a glass before starting to mix a drink like it was what she’d been doing her entire life.

When she finally poured the vibrant-pink concoction into the glass, she slid it across to Klaire.

“Lillim, I appreciate it, but I shouldn’t drink.”

“You are the most boring banshee I have ever met… It’s a virgin cosmo dear, I know better than to serve a teenage girl alcohol before a battle, not to mention one that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn is pregnant.”

“I’m not.”

“Sure Sweetie, whatever you say…” Lilly continued to reiterate her previous thoughts in the less public setting, then before long Klaire opened up. “…Let me give you my thoughts. As hard as it is now, I think this needed to happen…”

She continued, rationalising that the fact of the matter was, their children’s future-selves were involved and if they hadn’t prevented it it was probably a necessary event. Reasoning that as grief stricken as Tiamutael seemed to be, he would have undoubtedly stepped in to change things if he could do so at even reasonable cost.

“…Maybe she loses her memories and that lets her move past the rather intense grudge she is holding against her parents or maybe it keeps her from getting seriously hurt or killed later.

Everything that happens in life has a silver lining, sometimes it doesn’t seem worth it no matter how hard you look, but if ones amongst those hit hardest let it happen again I have to think there is more to it than our limited perspective lets us see.”

Lillim’s efforts paid off and before long it seemed like a weight had been lifted, which she used as justification to give the teenage banshee a little test when she asked if Lillim had any snack.

Lillim decided to put a jar of gherkins, a few chocolates and some peanut brittle on the bar, giving a telling smirk when Klaire opted for the pickled food.

“I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I’m not pregnant, just haven’t had these things since my birthday.”

“Of course dear, I understand, just craving something different.

The next day, the three of them reconvened, a little concerned by how distracted Tiamutael seemed to be as he tried teleporting sections of a cookie and getting frustrated when the whole thing disappeared.

“You better not be thinking of teleporting specific parts of things away as an attack.”

“I’m not… I’m trying to see if I can teleport the space around it away to keep it fresh.”

Whilst they didn’t doubt their children’s dedication to the cause of cookie conservation and preservation, they knew their was more to it than that, but given recent events it was a lot better than what they expected.

Klaire hugged and kissed them all goodbye and told Tiamutael to focus up and practice later, then they left.

Once again, Carl opened a portal to where Mobius was being held off and this time stepped through.

The moment they did, they were frozen in time, but what baffled them was the fact that the Elder-gods around them were moving freely as they battled what seemed to be past versions of themselves.

The ground was covered in a layer of sand, which upon their arrival began to pull itself into a single mass, eventually forming a being not entirely dissimilar to Gaia.

“So you are the hero? I could free you both, but it will serve you better to learn how to counter such things yourself. Take a breath, picture yourself trapped in an hourglass, the sand binding you as it slowly runs out, picture freeing yourself from its control and put in every ounce of strength you have to make that vision a reality.”

It was clear he expected it to take them longer to do, because when they both started moving as he finished, it made him step back reflexively. Something about Carl made him nervous though, whereas breaking free caused sand to start shaking off of Kyubi, it ran off Carl like molten glass.

“Where’s Mobius? I have a score to settle with the jerk who sent me a thousand years through time.”

The being made of sand laughed, explaining that Mobius was everywhere, the same as time itself.

Carl produced two spheres of divinity, one was that of his vermillion-bird, the other was that of Nergal. He didn’t cherry-pick traits this time round though, instead he pushed them together, and when two divinity structures conflicted he forced them to merge anyway.

When the fusion of structures relented and settled, Carl Reabsorbed it and put his new form into action.

The graceful elegance of Suzaku’s purified purgatorial fire, had fallen from grace and burned black. They also raged with a more violent inclination, rather than the more sculpted shape of the vermillion-bird’s.

As Carl took flight and soared forward before climbing, every copy that came within range seemed to be disrupted and dissolved, a slightly harrowing seen for those fighting them.

It appeared to most as a warning of what would happen if any chose to oppose him.

From where they had arrived, the sandy form of the one who had greeted them turned to Kyubi. “I guess times as dark as these require a hero darker still. I heard a fox-spirit is the one that revived the dead, was it you?”

“No, it was our daughter. As for the “hero”, I’d ask you don’t force your opinions on the man we’ve already made responsible for cleaning up our mess.”

Kyubi looked about and decided it would be best to keep their allies in good shape so they could at least make themselves useful if Carl needed support, but as she watched him soar through the sky as his flames seemed to autonomously streak towards the enemies it hardly seemed probable.

What concerned her more was Carl rushing like he was back to normal already.

“I wouldn’t worry about him, Mobius’ power won’t touch him as powerful as he is.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Cronus. Believing personal power is the deciding factor is what caused you to fall to Zeus and the others.”

Cronus suddenly struggled to hold his form as well as he had been, but he wasn’t stupid enough to voice his anger against her, he could sense her power was strong and gradually increasing as was the case with those who had ascended before their body could properly contain the power.

On top of that, he could sense Carl’s power increasing at a rate that should have been tearing his body apart and their daughter had the power to bring long-dead Elder-gods back from the dead.

Those who came to his aid were brief, but concise in their report.

“We were raised by one from whom the laws run like lambs from a wolf.” Those words from a being he recognised from a time when creation had yet to begin, who was a direct child of a law, they were beyond doubt or contradiction.

The girl’s father was an enigma, one tasked to overcome forces beyond what he nearly died just holding in place. It also hadn’t escaped his notice when the presence of that same girl became almost unrecognisably faint mere hours after Margo had intervened and ripped her from her prison.

Cronus decided that looking complacent was too dangerous and moved to rejoin the fight, but then Kyubi stopped him as she took her true-form and produced a colossal ball of revitalising flames, which lashed at allies to renew their vigor as precisely as Carl’s dead to extinguish their foes’

It was a demonstration of power that was beginning to cement the image everyone had of them not as a single individual that stood at the top, but of a group that would watch over all things and reward their allies with health and punish their enemies with oblivion.

Klaire could see it being shaped, and found herself smirking as she wondered if Carl had noticed, but then she looked up and saw Carl had started hovering upside down as built up his own ball of fire that threatened a far more sinister method was about to be employed than Carl would have usually considered.

She didn’t like it one bit, something was definitely off with him, to make matters worse it was someone who had thrown him through time and to make it worse still.

“Damn, he’s after revenge. Cronus, Cover everyone.”

Kyubi ran through the battlefield to build up speed, then started creating fiery steps that she used to bridge the gap between herself and her love.

Jumping from platform to platform, she felt Carl’s eyes catch her but continued regardless. She wanted to ask Tiamutael to pull Carl out, but then she noticed he was keeping his foot in the flames to prevent that, using Tiamutael’s failed practice as knowledge he could use to prevent interruption.

She had to be quick, decisive. Even if it meant hurting him in some temporary way, she knew that if he went through with it, he’d never recover mentally.

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