The Star 28

"Sounds like my daughter did a lot of talking to take in an ungrateful parasite."

The young mage turned around to face the powerful figure. Vague memories of the dragon ritual allowed him to place the dangerous man before him as a tier seven. It was his first time seeing one up close and he could tell that the man's aura was being held tightly in. It didn't make much difference. Effortlessly, the man's mere presence threatened to overwhelm and break down Orison's physical body.

The only thing keeping his very structure from vibrating apart in Hiidan's presence was his own over stressed aura. It was terrifying. This wasn't even the man's main body. By guesswork, the young mage could figure that the presence of a tier eight might very well shake reality around them apart into the void unless they were in the higher dimensions he knew nothing about personally. And with the weakening laws of the Greater Reality were in, Hiidan very well could appear in person if he didn't care about the well being of his own people.

Orison wondered if the blood leaking through his teeth was from clenching them so hard or Hiidan's deadly proximity as he said, "Oh, you can 'take me in'. I've certainly been 'taken for a ride' but don't take me for a chump. What's next, shoveling mud down my throat until my stomach bursts and calling me a filthy pig?

"I'd do just about anything for my son. But if you're playing some sick game with me, I'll apologize to him from the other side of oblivion. Feel free to f***ing follow me there if you think I have a bill to settle."

Hiidan smiled wickedly. With a small relaxing of his aura, Orison was forced to relinquish his physical form to keep from taking lethal damage as he phased slightly. It didn't help much. But for the short time it would take for his magic reserves to drain away from maintaining his phased state, resetting his pattern would heal all the uncountable micro damages.

The villainous acting patriarch said, "A couple of testing jabs and you're ready to commit suicide?... How mentally weak are you?"

A touch of madness crept into Orison's voice. "Oh? So, now I'm mentally weak for refusing to kiss your a** while you sh*t on me? You're strong enough to force me into wh*ring myself but no one's going to f*** me without paying a price. And, believe me. On my way out the door, you WILL pay a price for trying."

Beneath the glowing fuzziness of his relaxed, desperately reassembling pattern, tears of molten spiritual essence began pouring from blazing ethereal eyes. He wasn't preparing to detonate his spiritual core. Such a thing would be laughable to the being in front of him. No, Orison was preparing to feed everything he had into his entanglement power to drag the nearest avatar of Nyarlhotep through himself and into the room.

Suddenly the room was filled with unrolling papyrus. Upon every small bit of space available on the unrolling scrolls, cramped sigils blazed with a power of absolute order. The sensation of rigid structure was so intense and alien, it was like the polar opposite of a Great Old One's madness inducing chaos field. The power of it snapped his form into instant clarity and out of phased status.

The powerful projection of an ibis headed man in richly adorned linen tunic said, "In honor of your spiritual origin's sacrifice to order and existence, I will forgive your trespass of desperation induced madness this once, Outer God Remnant Orison."

Turning to Hiidan, the projection added, "Kill them, befriend them or strike a bargain. But, do not toy with this one, son-in-law. Were it not for my intervention, we would have lost things precious to both of us today."

Hiidan chuckled, a little unhinged sounding himself, "I can read him. It was a bluff."

On the verge of fainting, Orison struggled to retain consciousness as he said, "That's the problem with truth telling abilities. A single truth has countless interpretations."

The ibis head projection said in wry monotone. "Then let me share mine. This creature expected intervention but if it had not come, they would have carried through without hesitation."

The young mage tried to give a saintly smile but it came out looking feeble and pained. "If I didn't have that level of resolve, intervention wouldn't have come because it wouldn't have been needed. Giga Gramps over there wouldn't have believed me capable and I would have kept being stepped on until I lost my mind. I don't have the luxury of playing nice to a tyrant who'll never take me seriously. "None of you give a sh*t about your mortal progeny. And, I hardly even count as that anymore. Al will be born with a proxy soul now that I've closed the loop and become endless. That just means I'm a weak stranger to be exploited. Except, I have no intentions of being exploited. And now, you know weak doesn't equal harmless. So, are you going to kill me or are you ready to discuss some mutual benefit?"

Hiidan threw up his hands in mock surrender with an equally mocking leer. "Ease up there, tiger. I was only winding you up before I resolved the little misunderstanding you seem to be under. Why don't you go sleep off your power abuse hangover first...

"I blame the problem with today's youths on participation medals, Thoth. Every little edge lord thinks they're special just because they exist. Smack them on the bottom once and send them to their room, they start looking for the key to the gun cabinet or your stash of prescription meds. So sad."

The ibis headed projection didn't bother answering as it faded away.

Realizing that the ancient monster had mellowed out into an obnoxious blend of trying to get a rise out of him while flexing their understanding of early twenty-first century Earth culture, the young mage said "Okay, boomer," and passed out.

***

Once the young mage woke up in a simple stone room with a comfortable futon spread out over a jade bed carved from the wall, he breathed out a sigh of relief. Whether it was pretending to believe Mage's lie that Healer and Assassin were stopped from having a kid or the half truth that he was being detained to be a breeder, Orison hadn't dared not to play along. There was a multitude of better ways to go about things but Hiidan was such an unpredictable person that the young mage had been afraid of flipping the script he knew worked.

He had been genuinely nervous when he woke up to Mage giving him the fake news breakdown. That was an 'off the script' event that had made him worried it might not be fake at all. It was supposed to be Knight, Little Pete. He assumed it was a small ripple effect of the equally unpredicted heart-to-heart he had with Druid. From there, nothing was how he remembered it supposed to be going. Thankfully, it seemed that things were put back on track as soon as Hiidan showed up. Their interaction went exactly as it had in the obelisk provided 'what if' Orison decided to use.

That relief quickly evaporated as soon as he noticed that he was a 'he'. It was counterbalanced by a very different kind of relief, however. It wasn't difficult to figure out what ripple changed that particular unpleasant portion of his planned route. Or, at least, he hoped it was because of the unplanned introduction to Teremun.

Self inspection turned into an emotional roller coaster event. His soul had been supplement grown too big for the pitiful amount of catalyst he had. The thought of losing the chance to convert his soul into a powerful 'primal' one caused his heart to drop until he noticed that he had nearly triple the amount of origin 'marrow'. More importantly, some external force had condensed it into a seed. That seed had been inserted into his soul core very close to the source of his essence generating spiritual realm.

Of all the things he had power over, the fundamental construction and placement of things in his soul core wasn't one of them. Orison couldn't even begin to fathom what kind of understandings it would take to do that. As terrifying as having some being of such power tinkering with him was, the result was undeniably beneficial. The catalyst was protected from dilution into weaker expressions and would constantly be recharged for more work.

Next, he noted his barren spiritual procreative potential. It hadn't been outside of expectations for his hosts to clean him out but it still pained him. The small comfort he could give himself was that he was still very early into his overall possible lifespan. Among mortal fate severed beings, he was a toddler, at best.

It was a reasonable assumption that, even though his best spiritual fertility development period was over, he still had time and opportunity for more. He especially had high hopes for the potential boons of becoming a primal soul. Such beings were responsible for forming and populating existence in the early days of a Greater Reality. He hardly thought fertility was an issue such a soul would have to worry about.

Either way, spiritually virile or not, he didn't feel that glum about it. He had Jammers, after all. More so, he understood the lopsided attachment greater entities had for their spiritual children but knew he had the capacity to love those born to him in body only, just as deeply.

"Meh, I need to stop worrying about it so much. I'll never become a Venito but I don't need to be so damn serious about every minor detail. Otherwise, I'll never have a family at all," he muttered.

Stowing that away, Orison began thinking about his next move before frowning in concern once again. The accumulated knowledge of this reality and its people was gone. Names, events and opportunities he planned on rummaging through to salvage were a hole filled with details of the distant past as Al or Al's time connected with Piran the first time instead.

In a choked babble of frustration, he said, "I've been adjusted! My Deathless Mound was activated at some point. My obelisk memories of here are fake but the Earth Al was born on isn't and it's still here. It hasn't been drawn to my Greater Reality yet. How the hell did I not wake up!?"

A wash of power dizzied him for a moment as a void cutout of reality solidified into Hiidan. "Because I didn't let you wake up. I was working off of 'good party' logic. If you don't remember anything that happened, you assume it was a good party. But, if you don't get drunk enough to black out, you remember all the dumb crap that happened and it becomes a bad party."

From across the room, the man tossed him a crystal. As soon as Orison caught it, he saw a memory of someone standing in a room with Healer, Assassin and a teenage boy named Jaime. The person who recorded the memory saw spirit nearly as good as Orison himself could. Through that spirit sight, he could tell the boy was definitely Jammer's 'dark night of the soul' reincarnation.

Somewhat apologetically, Hiidan added. "I figure besides that, the less you know the better things will be for you. After some reconsideration, we decided not to add insult to injury and skipped non-consent parenthood. You're actually not the spiritual parent of anyone else, technically... You can rest a little easier with that, I'm guessing."

Orison sighed. "The trade off was my entire potential being burned through?"

"Ah... I may have gotten carried away with soul forging. Good artifacts take a little something special to have 'growing' potential after the fact. But hey, I was put wise to the little something extra special in you and helped that along. Believe me, the trade was in your favor," Hiidan explained.

Groaning, Orison said, "Please tell me some of my soul making potential was used for something other than that!"

The man nodded. "Helped stitch my son's, your great grandfather's, soul back together better. He was almost destroyed by the assault of a Black Magician avatar."

Thoughtful, the young mage said, "That's weird. Direct violence isn't exactly Gnarly's modus operandi."

Chuckling, "Well, my boy may have knocked boots with that particular avatar's chosen future monster baby making sweetheart."

Orison's eyes widened. "Go giga pops!... I guess... Feel free to skip on disturbing details but why is my soul so... let's say, stout? 'Fat' wouldn't be spiritual body positive."

Hiidan chuckled self consciously. "That ties in to why I soul forged with you a little. It was a real porker before that."

Taking a moment to order his scattered thoughts, Hiidan said, "When we were done stitching my boy back together, I fed you some low end ambrosia. You slurped yourself and another person in the room up and spit the both of you back out. The results were interesting... So, we may or may not have done it a few dozen more times with a few other... people. Well, mostly people."

Black lines formed on Orison's face. "I can't remember who they are but there was someone I was supposed to do that for on purpose. I hope your diviner made a suggestion on some names when you were doing that. I don't even want to think about how high my Deathless Mound's tolerance for resources has grown... You probably won't care much but that was one of my life saving aces."

With puzzled amusement etched on his features, Hiidan said, "Yeah... I don't know what 'Deathless Mound' means to you but it's outer god stuff, for sure. What I do know is that it doesn't have an outsider beacon in it anymore. I dug the last part of that out of you... We actually dredged a lot of bad for you stuff out. Well, it's good stuff but not good to have IN you.

"A positive energy plane rip was leaking cancer water into your void. We healed that up and siphoned the remnants. It was converting your natural production of excess life essence into more cancer water. Back when you were weaker, that might have been a nice thing to have but it's turned into a... very bad thing.

"Thoth fished some broken ritual remnants out of you. He's learning some interesting things from it but they were trash junking up your ability to develop resistance to spiritual invasion. I didn't care enough to keep listening to the rest. He likes to talk while he works.

Thoth's projected voice added, "There are only eight dimensions that are relevant to structured beings. The rest are pure nonsense. Void, storage and realm spaces have been organized and set to only include those eight.

"You no longer need fear an intent weaker than tier seven finding cracks in your spiritual realm and bypassing defenses to steal from or invade you. Parasitic and osmotic leeching of your essences will cease and you'll start building reserves properly instead of relying on the paltry amount your physical form can contain.

"Metaphorically speaking, everything you weren't nailing down was being stolen or lost back into the Greater Void. You don't need to tie up your generated essences into things like servant pacts and crystals to retain them any longer. No thanks are necessary. It was merely a repayment for the benefits I have gained from you directly or indirectly.

"Also, I took the liberty of destroying a tier six purse artifact/ infernal will that was behind most of the theft. It had the audacity to lash out at me, disrupting my contemplations. Honestly, a thief should be more humble. The sheer audacity-excuse me. Self allotted break time for this sub mind is over and some of us, son-in-law, have actual work to do."

Hiidan shrugged. "Benefits of self employment, oh ancient god of scribblers... Great guy but what do you expect from an ex-god of scribes, magic and OCD -er- astronomy. And, don't look for answers from me on things he did that you don't understand, Orison. It's no exaggeration to say that he's forgotten more than all the other tier eight directors of this reality combined, collectively know."

The young mage gave a saintly smile. "It's too much to process at the moment anyway... Since it's not a good idea to meet or get entangled with anyone here any further, because personal trauma and rising terror, can I please be excused to meet Druid? If that's not possible, just drop me off on Earth anywhere but America or the Asian continent. I don't remember the reason for the second but..."

Hiidan looked surprised. "Well, you were amusing. So, I thought about offering you a place with us but if you want to go to the most supernatural oppressive and resource barren place in all of existence instead-"

"Yes," Orison interrupted, uninterested in offers or suggestions from the 'playful' monster of a patriarch.

Almost pouting, Hiidan said, "That's hurtful but suit yourself."

In a moment that passed faster than he could react or brace himself, Orison was swallowed up by the man's void form, spit out over sea. Without enough time to react to a protected Earth's suppression, he was on a painful but survivable landing into the water. His ability to survive afterwards wasn't nearly as certain.