Chapter 749 - Going Back

“You can’t do it!”

Zeke ignored the drone, just as he had been for the past couple of days.  The thing had found him the second he’d set foot into the Ways, and it had been following him ever since.  Somehow, it had discovered Zeke’s intention to descend into the Mortal Realm, and it very much disapproved of the notion.

Not surprising.

From the outside, it probably looked like he was hellbent on destroying the entire realm.  In most cases, that would have been true.  However, in Zeke’s, he felt certain that he could contain his power to a degree that would allow him to safely enter the Mortal Realm so he could do what needed to be done.

“I’ve already told you that it’ll be fine.”

“And I do not believe you!” insisted the Waymaster through its drone. 

“I have a technique.  It’s safe.”

Of course, the Waymaster still didn’t believe him, but that was as expected.  He wouldn’t be convinced until he saw Zeke do it.  It just didn’t have the capacity to think outside the box in which it had always lived.  The rules said that the Mortal Realm couldn’t support the presence of a greater god, and that was what the Waymaster would always believe.  Until proven wrong.

Zeke intended to satisfy that requirement.

And so, he ignored the Waymaster’s drone as he traversed the Ways.  He didn’t dare use the threads to pull himself along.  Instead, he walked like a normal person.  Otherwise, he stood the risk of unraveling the delicate balance upon which the Ways had been built.  It was one thing to mask his presence.  It was something else entirely to start pulling on threads whose purpose he didn’t fully understand.

  Fortunately, aside from pleading with him to abandon his course of action, the Waymaster didn’t try to stop him.  It likely sensed how poorly that would go.  For all its power, Zeke could destroy it at will.  Doing so would likely tear a hole in reality and hasten the decay of the Framework, but if pushed, he would do what he had to do.

Because once his course was decided, he wasn’t going to be dissuaded.

To that end, he strode through the Ways, eventually arriving at the platform containing his destination.  The Nexus was still an enormous city, just as it had been during his first visit, but to Zeke, it seemed a lot smaller.  Perhaps that was the result of his lofty position.  Looking down on them – metaphorically – the lives of normal people tended to look much smaller.

And the cities where they lived followed suit.

Especially when he knew its origin.  The Waymaster had never put any real thought into its construction.  The Ways were merely an outgrowth of its instinct to expand.  And the cities dotting its platforms were meant to help in that endeavor.  How, Zeke wasn’t certain, but they certainly didn’t exist because the Waymaster wanted to be kind.  And the former amoeba didn’t have a creative cell in its body.

It just existed and acted according to its instinct, and that knowledge robbed it of some of its grandeur.  So he didn’t waste any time reaching his destination.  Soon enough, he arrived at the compound meant to facilitate contact with the lower realms.  It did so through a system of complex enchantments, and it required quite a power expenditure on the part of the user. 

But it worked.

Zeke barged in without hesitation.  The attendants didn’t try to stop him.  By that point, he had a bit of a reputation.  He’d been silent for quite a while, but a man couldn’t kill multiple greater gods without everyone knowing.  And nobody wanted to find themselves at the end of his ire.

So, the way to the machine was unbarred, and he soon found himself standing before a crude portal. 

“This is it?” he wondered aloud, disappointed by what he saw.  The threads were all over the place, tangled when they should’ve been straight and straight when they should’ve been knotted.  To an amateur, it might’ve seemed impressive enough, but to Zeke, it just looked sloppy.

Of course, whoever had built it had done so via runes and glyphs.  They couldn’t manipulate the threads, except through those intermediaries.  But Zeke immediately saw a thousand flaws, all stemming from the creator’s lack of talent.

His initial impulse was to fix it.  Once, he might’ve done just that.  But in the end, he only needed it to work a single time.  After that, the thing could explode.  Perhaps the people of the Mortal Realm would be better off for it.

In any case, he stepped forward and laid his hand on the apparatus, which was attached to a large, circular gate that stood on a pedestal in the center of the room.  Inside was what looked like a pool of liquid metal. 

The apparatus itself was mostly useless.  It was just a medium by which to project illusions.  So, he bypassed it and focused on the gate itself.  If he’d stepped through without preparation, it would have exploded.  Zeke would have been gravely injured, and even if he knew he could simply reassemble himself, he’d have lost any opportunity to help Talia’s people. 

With that in mind, he studied the gate.  After only an hour, he realized that it wasn’t really all that different from the gates he summoned to facilitate entry into the Crimson Tower.  Far less stable, of course.  More versatile, as well.  But fundamentally the same.  Zeke used those similarities as a jumping-off point so he could begin to understand the underlying principles at work.

It took more than a week before he felt confident in his findings.  A week more, and he decided it was time to start tinkering.  He reached out with his will and started untangling the threads.  Of course, that deactivated the portal itself, but such was an expected consequence.  It would reactivate when he was finished.

Gradually, he rewove the lattice of strings, focusing intently on the negative threads.  He might be able to get a passable product without them, but it would never be perfect.  And Zeke didn’t want to settle for anything less.

Over the next few weeks, he slowly layered one weave atop another until the design began to take shape.  It took another month before it became workable, but he kept going, gradually perfecting the design until, at last, he had finished.

All in all, it took more than six months.

Less than a blink of an eye for someone who lived on his timescale.

It flashed with power, and a much more solid wall of silver manifested on its interior.  Finally, Zeke took a step back and sighed. 

“Please do not do this,” the Waymaster’s drone said.  “You risk destabilizing everything.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Zeke stated, encasing himself in the mesh of threads he’d developed to hide his presence.  It was like wrapping himself in cling wrap, and he immediately felt like he was suffocating.  He wasn’t. He could still move and breathe just like anyone else.  The only issue was that, once he’d enabled the mesh, he was cut off from the threads. 

Fortunately, he would have no issue destroying anything in his path with the strength of his body alone. 

He stepped forward.  The drone reached out to grab his arm, but Zeke jerked it away.  The dull creature wasn’t infused with its master’s true power, and so, it couldn’t even begin to keep up with Zeke.  He used that to his advantage, and at last, stepped through the circle.

Vaguely, he was aware that it exploded the second he stepped through, and for a moment, Zeke felt like he was floating in nothingness.  It wasn’t so different from those few times Oberon had brought him into his constructed realities.  Though without the dwarf’s guidance, he only had his own impetus to push him forward.  Thankfully, the portal only led to one place.  He only had to follow the path.

He willed himself down a tunnel of nothing until, suddenly, he found himself falling.  For a moment, he didn’t know what was happening, and when he did, he very nearly broke his mesh and reached out for the threads so he could arrest his momentum.  He caught himself just in time, though. 

The free fall lasted for a few seconds until he hit the slope of a mountain, cratering it.  He rolled for a few seconds before grabbing hold of the earth and stopping his descent. 

Then, as he lay there looking up at a pristine blue sky, he took a long, deep breath.  The air was sweet.  Crisp and cool.  It was so much better than he remembered. 

There was a part of Zeke that just wanted to lay there and relax for the next couple of years.  Or maybe just a few minutes.  But with every passing hour he remained in the Mortal Realm, the mesh would unravel.  It would take years for the dissolution to complete, but once it began, the thing could burst at any second.

And if that happened, his very presence would destroy the realm.

So, he didn’t have any time to waste, even if he very much wished it was otherwise. 

He pushed himself to his feet, then took stock of the situation.  From what he could tell, he’d found himself in the north of the Radiant Isles’ main continent.  Once, he’d fought his way through them, killing frost giants and goat men.  At the time, it had been an exhilarating adventure, but now, he felt almost nostalgic.

He sighed, then took another deep breath of the crisp air.  With his ability to manipulate the threads locked behind his mesh, he found it so much easier to pretend it was all real.  He couldn’t see the threads unless he tried. 

He didn’t try.

He was content in his temporary ignorance. 

Perhaps there was a lesson to be learned there.  Maybe too much knowledge was enough to doom anyone to a miserable life.  Certainly, it was true for him. 

After only a few more moments, he took off at a light jog that was faster than anyone in the Mortal Realm could sprint.  He wasn’t sure, but if he’d had to guess, he would have put his speed at something between two-hundred and three-hundred miles per hour.  If he truly pushed himself, he could easily break the sound barrier, and with the strength of his body alone.

Indeed – he wasn’t sure of his own limits.  He’d grown so much and so quickly that he’d never had an occasion to test his physical abilities.  Instead, he’d focused on the threads, which allowed him to move faster than light. 

He didn’t dare do that in the Mortal Realm.

Zeke found himself slowing down just so he could enjoy the atmosphere.  So he could appreciate the terrain.  Once, he’d thought the entirety of the Radiant Isles lost to the undead plague Micayne had launched.  So, he was happy to find that it had passed.  He saw plenty of creatures along the way, most of which fled the second they recognized his presence.

He didn’t blame them.

If he were a rabbit or a raccoon, he’d have run too.

It wasn’t long before he found a fortress surrounded by a small town.  Vaguely, it resembled one of the waystations he’d seen thousands of years before, but that wasn’t terribly surprising. Most of the residents of the Radiant Isles had come from Earth, and that meant they shared a cultural throughpoint with Zeke.  It would have been odder if their architecture wasn’t familiar.

He also knew that there were thousands of other islands out there, each one playing host to people from different worlds.  But Zeke wasn’t there for them.  He was there to cripple the Radiant Host. 

To that end, he slowed and approached the fortress just like any other traveler.  He needed to discover how deep the rot went, and once he’d found its limits, excise it.