Young Memory And God

"His first prototypes are always a mess. I suggest just breaking it and have Gul take the remaining pieces to halt his progression a little and get some metal to work with. He was trying to attack you and locked you in a maze for a while, I think this is justifiable."

Zeeth scanned the thing with a pulse of mana and realized what it was like inside, just a mess of wires and moving parts. It was a much messier, much more inconvenient form of his own body that couldn't even compare. He did as Page told him to, scanning the ground while he was at it and sending a block of greystone upwards to destroy it. It was sturdier than he thought it would be, mostly staying intact despite the amount of power he put into that attack. Only a single-arm fell off but the robot was wrecked nonetheless, unable to move on its own anymore.

C.M. wailed, "what have you done! Did you not see it moving? It was getting there!" as he held the arm but Zeeth already sent the speedy and slightly colorful Gul to snatch up everything, including the arm, and toss it onto Page's spatial bag.

"No!" he yelped as the arm was instantly zipped away, "fine, you can have this one! I still have the blueprints for this, I will come back stronger!" and he pulled out a large pink ball that he threw to the floor. It popped open and temporarily blinded then with a large spread of mana mixed with the pink powder. The smoke was not only limiting his sight, he felt his mana sensation pulse interrupted and blocked. He quickly improvised and figured out a way out of it, something he had to practice a lot in the forest, and instead of making pulses of mana, he sent small, concentrated lines out around him. It was a lot more limited but they could pierce through the smoke and feel the general shape of C.M., who was now waving a long stick, the hilt harboring a gem, over a small disc. A wave of wiggling mana spread out and then C.M. was suddenly gone, along with a small portion of the mana that was near him and the disc.

"He teleported away." Page said. "By the way, he actually does come back stronger every time. He starts off weak, but he is a genius. He always comes back exponentially better and stronger until he can go no longer or until he wins."

Zeeth thought back to the interaction, Gul seemed almost greedy when it was grabbing the metals and such, moving lightning-fast, much faster than he usually was.

He also had a strange basic understanding of the floor's structure and was able to change up the floor to make it harder to break through, something he likely gained from Gul. His affinity with rocks and minerals was slowly being spread to Zeeth and he could make simple changes to rocks with mana. He would be mad at C.M. but his sociable personality and the fact that he helped make Gror what he was now alleviated some of this. He still had the strong urge to ruin every plan he had and steal all his things so his animosity wasn't all gone. He still suffered long hours of darkness and discomfort in the maze.

Page and Zeeth sent a focused beam of mana in the direction where the carriages were and almost began running but, remembering Gror, Zeeth asked, "can you sense the carriages?"

"What? Of course not, they must be so far away now!" he said, still immersed in studying the arm that Page had given him after a little insisting right after C.M. had gone. "Besides, how are we even going to catch up? Let's just walk and hope they stop for us."

He had now opened up the arm and was digging through the wires as Page and Zeeth looked at each other. They had this connection as they looked at each other, despite never having done anything like this before, and nodded. Zeeth grabbed the arm and closed it back up.

"Hey! What are you doin- huh!?" he said, but he was cut short because Page was hoisting his square frame from the floor, using his buff skill, and held him like a book. They both began bolting to the carriages, the wind pulling back on their hair, but also on Gror's flapping lips. His eyes filled with terror as they sprinted ahead, tears filling his eyes from the wind. They stopped just ahead of the carriages and set Gror back down with the arm clutched on his chest like a stuffed animal.

Page laughed and said, "felt just like the old days!" with a smile suggesting something he reminisced fondly about. Something from the past Zeeth never enjoyed yet was a part of. It was a common thing in his life, a time-traveling friend and his memories wiped.

The merchants were all confused and surprised at their appearance, shocked at the speed of their running.

They climbed onto the carriages with the still shaking Gror and the moment he sat back down, a memory came to him. He was back at the room where his mother and himself were about to be killed but another woman came bursting in through their window and tased the killers. She held her wrist to her mouth and said, "Trial Dragonfly has succeeded after 5 months. Remove the hypnosis and bring them back."

Zeeth finally looked away from the woman and noticed several more people dressed just like her, all in black from head to toe and heavily armed with strong but sleek weapons. She flashed something in front of his face, a shiny clock with a triangular symbol in the middle, and memories swarmed back to him.

His mother wasn't someone who picked him up back in the day as she said, he was sent to this house just five months ago as a test, to see what would happen had he been put back into society. This woman who just burst through the window was his aunt, Felhira. And his mother, his kind and loving mother were simply hypnotized into believing she picked him up. The flash of the clock also seemed to do the trick for everyone else there, his fake mother blinked a few times as her head was cleared. His father did the same thing, hitting his head lightly with his hand. All of them dropped their weapons as the clock flashed at them a second time.

As his own memories were corrected, he felt his usual longing for whatever fake scenario to be real again. He remembered how he had done this multiple times before, and each time ended in a similar way. He was a child spy working for the government, a job he was born into. He remembered the annoying feeling he had to be woken up from his dream life, having a mother and father, even if they were fake or murderous.

He couldn't remember his own real parents at all and hated the fact that he had to live with these spies who had lost all emotions. They might not care, but he did, despite not showing it. Perhaps that's why the spies made him join, they thought he was like them.

When his memories came back to him, that he was a spy and not some child, he climbed out of the window and into their usual tank grade vans. There, several other spies were watching every nook and cranny that the house had and any other location that mattered. There were no other children on any of the cameras or in the van, no one congratulated or even acknowledged that they knew he was there, but he was used to all this by now.

He was suddenly snapped back into reality, the carriage was going along and the merchants were talking to each other. Page was staring at him, ready for him to come back to question him but Black asked first, 'what just happened? You blanked out for a second.'

'Some memory I was thinking about.'

"Page, I've been meaning to ask. God doesn't want me to talk about him with you, so why can I do it?" Zeeth whispered.

"I think you told me his wording was strange, it must've been something like 'i won't allow you to spread new information about me' but since I already knew about him, that didn't matter."

"Then why doesn't he stop me if he knows I'm telling you new things? Why doesn't he stop me from talking about him more?"

"Maybe, just maybe, he doesn't know."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you're talking about him in front of Black right now, and he didn't know before. Maybe, the only time he really checks up on you is when you visit him. Maybe he is currently being distracted by something much larger than us and doesn't feel the need to keep a constant eye on all moving things."

"You're right. Black has no clue yet nothing has happened."

Black simply sat there, confused at what was happening.

"Has God really been slacking?" Zeeth asked, "But he can read minds, what if he just checks up on me every time I go?"

"Think about the last time you went. Did you have to ask the questions? Did you ask questions before?"

"Yeah, lately I did have to ask my questions. But before God would just answer me before I said anything and try to get me to leave. He's also been changing between people and telling me he was having some fun by being different people doing different things."

"I'm not sure how god would think, but he's had millions of years to do fun things. Why is he doing them now?" Page asked, not expecting any response.

"Well, he did drag me here because he said he was bored. Maybe he feels these pangs of boredom and just does things."

"Well, maybe hold off on visiting him for now."

"No, that might make him more suspicious. I always make sure to visit him near the end of the day. I want to ask if I can talk about him with Black in my presence, but I won't share any information that would jeopardize us, like how I can talk to you or Black about him."

"Alright. Is there anything else you remember him saying that could affect this?"

"Yeah, when he warned me about spreading information, he told me I was being tracked for intentionally trying to spread information about him, but if I wasn't trying to spread it and someone simply overheard me, then I don't think it would be picked up. If I want to share info, I would need to do it that way, by somehow sharing my voice without me knowing it."

"That would be nearly impossible now that we're thinking like this! Can we share your thoughts?"

"No, someone already tried and any memory regarding God is locked away in my head, probably from a skill he has that no mortal could break past."