Chapter 733 - Cost of Victory

Zeke struggled.

No matter how hard he pulled, the threads that comprised Aja’s tree form refused the budge.  The first few had resisted as well, but he’d managed to pry them loose.  Severing them took a bit more effort, but in the end, he did it.  However, now that he’d moved on to some of the thicker strands, he couldn’t force them to obey his commands. 

And that was enough to send him into a frustrated rage.

He didn’t scream or hit things.  Instead, that fury focused his mind in a way that nothing else could.  Using that as fuel, he redoubled his efforts.  Still, it would not move, much less comply with his demands. 

Then, he saw something that took him aback.  The thicker strands weren’t alone.  Just like everything else, they were composed of more threads.  He just needed to bore down, to focus his mind to a sharp point, in order to perceive them.  He did just that, and layer after layer, he saw the world for what it was.

Often, he’d seen reality as being made of threads on threads, but he’d had no concept for how small they became.  In a lot of ways, it reminded him of the old days when he spent months slowly mapping out and adjusting his skills.  Back then, the complexity of it all had been baffling.  Now, his memories were like looking at a child’s drawings and comparing them to a painting from the Renaissance. 

Of course, it was even more complex than even that analogy suggested.  Instead of a painting, those same drawings could be compared to a four-dimensional sculpture, the bulk of which was invisible to the naked eye. 

But it also felt like all of his previous experiences had prepared him for the task at hand.  Those countless hours spent studying runes, untold days putting them together in new and exciting combinations, and even months of rearranging their component symbols – it was all just a preamble to working with the threads.

He dove in.

Destroying a single, miniscule thread sent all the others rushing in to fill the gap.  That forced Zeke to react quickly, and at times, he felt like he was playing whack-a-mole.  However, his countless battles had prepared him for that, too.  Quick reaction speed wasn’t his most potent attribute, but it wasn’t a weakness either. 

As he wielded his will like a scythe, Zeke felt like he was fighting another battle against a nearly infinite foe.  He didn’t tire.  He didn’t rest.  He didn’t even contemplate giving in.  Instead, he threw himself into the task with the kind of insatiable savagery for which he’d become widely known.

As he did so, he didn’t let his mind wander.  Certainly, in some ignored corner of his thoughts, he worried for his friends.  For Talia.  And Pudge.  Tucker and the kobolds.  If they had been on that destroyed moon…

No – he wouldn’t allow himself to become distracted by such things.  There would be a time to consider the implications, to pick up the pieces and mourn those who had been lost.  But that time could not be now.

Not with a tree goddess to expose, then kill. 

But it would be no quick process.  Indeed, it was easily the most complex task he’d ever taken upon himself.  If it took less than years, he would be incredibly surprised.  So, he opened his eyes and said, “Oberon.”

“What?”

“Flee,” he said.  “Get what’s left of my people to safety.  Use whatever means you have at your disposal.”

“If I go out there, I will die,” Oberon stated.

“I…”

“That was not a refusal,” the dwarf said, straightening to his full height.  “I embrace it.  I will do as you ask.”

With that, Oberon simply disappeared.  A rumble in the distance told Zeke where he’d gone, but from his position, he simply couldn’t do anything about it.  What he did realize was that, a few moments later, he could feel his people retreating.  How Oberon had affected that retreat so quickly, he had no idea.  But he’d done it.

Over the next few minutes, Zeke waded back into the threads, but in the back of his mind, he could feel the fluctuations that came from the battle raging outside.  It didn’t take a seer to understand what was going on.  Oberon had clearly chosen to delay Aja, distracting her so that the armies could retreat to safety.

And Zeke also knew what that meant.

He focused on the threads, but a part of him couldn’t ignore the ongoing fight.  He imagined how it was going – a fight between two greater gods.  One was the one of the oldest and most experienced in all of existence, and the other was the second most powerful among them. 

The results were already written.

In some ways, Zeke wished he could go out there and assist.  Perhaps, together, they could finish Aja off.  But they’d already tried that, hadn’t they?  It would only get them both killed.  No – Oberon was there as a distraction, and it was up to Zeke to use it to his advantage.

So, he pushed ahead, using his indomitable will to force himself to focus solely on the task.  And even as he severed another thread, then another, he felt the battle reach a crescendo.  A week later, Zeke had managed to destroy a hundred more strings, but that had come at a cost.

Suddenly, Oberon returned.

“Zeke,” the dwarf said, collapsing to his knees.

Zeke bounded to him, incapable of ignoring the decrepit state of Oberon’s body.  He was so much thinner.  Smaller.  Like every ounce of muscle had withered away.  His beard of leaves was almost entirely gone, and the light in his eyes had grown dull. 

He was dying.

Zeke cradled him in his arms, wishing he’d made a thousand different choices.  He and Oberon weren’t close.  They’d only had a handful of conversations.  But in the end, Oberon was the single most impactful force in his life. Without him, he never would have been reborn, much less achieved so much. 

And then there was the juxtaposition of a healthy Oberon with the decaying creature in his arms.  One could not look at that and not feel a potent wave of sadness crashing down upon his soul.

“They escaped,” Oberon said.  “I think…I think I can buy you a few years.  Maybe as much as a decade.  But if you haven’t destroyed this form by then…”

“A decade?”

It was impossible.  Zeke knew he couldn’t unravel the skill – or her body, whichever it was – in such a short span. “I need more time…”

Oberon frowned.  “Fifty years.  It is the most I can do.”

Zeke wanted to object to that as well.  In the context of the timescale with which he normally worked, that was just the blink of an eye.  He needed more, but he couldn’t say as much.  Oberon’s offer was everything he could give.

“That…that will have to work,” Zeke said.  “What will you do?”

“Sacrifice myself,” Oberon answered with a wan smile.  He reached out, gripping Zeke’s shoulder.  His grip was so weak.  Barely more than a graze.  “I always knew it would come to this, kid.  You are more important than me.  More important than anyone.  I…I’ve only seen the threads twice.  In all my long life…

“Tell me what it’s like.”

Zeke swallowed hard.  In the distance, he heard Aja scream Oberon’s name, but he ignored it.  Unless she wanted to rip herself apart, they were safe.  For now.  So, he opened his mouth and spoke.  “It’s beautiful.  Complex.  Like a tapestry of fate.  I think…I think all of reality is there.  Past, present, future.  Creation and destruction.  Life and death.  It’s all part of that tapestry.”

“Tapestry.  The Waymaster called it that, too.  Fitting.”

He sighed, then continued, “You can do this, Zeke.  I know you.  I’ve watched you.  If anyone in all the universe can make this work, it’s you.”

“She’s too –”

“I’m not talking about Aja.  She’s just a bump in the road.  This is about the universe.  About all of reality.  You can save it.”

“I…”

“Don’t respond.  You don’t need to.  Because I believe,” Oberon said.  He coughed, and a little blood splattered his chin.  “I’m going to go out there now.  Don’t follow.  Don’t watch.  I don’t want you to get caught up in it all.”

With a deep breath, he vanished.  Zeke could scarcely follow the thread of his skill as he teleported outside.  But after only a second later, an explosion of vitality, mana, divine energy, and primal destruction swept across the tree goddess.  Very little made it inside the living cavern, but even that was enough to take Zeke’s breath away.

And he knew what it meant.

He didn’t need to see the threads, which had gone so still that they were almost inanimate, to know that Oberon’s sacrifice had been successful.  Whatever he’d done, it had injured Aja to the point where she had been knocked unconscious.  Or whatever the equivalent for a greater god was. 

And that meant he was on a timer.

Like his worry for his people, his concerns for Oberon ended up in the back corner of his mind, and he dove back into the threads. 

It was a good distraction, and not only because it required every ounce of his concentration.  But it was also because he knew precisely why Oberon had chosen to sacrifice himself.  And he couldn’t let his patron down.

It wasn’t so different from his youth, when he’d make one mistake or another on the baseball field.  Back then, it was his father he’d dreaded disappointing.  As infuriating as it was, he’d cared so much about that.  Or maybe it was when he’d let down teammates.  Coaches.  Or that feeling he got when he knew he could no longer play.  That look in his mother’s eyes when she saw his future laid out before him. 

Baseball had been his way out.  It had been the path to something better.

And then it was gone.

Just like Oberon. 

Now, though, he had a chance to make it worthwhile.  With that in mind, he attacked the threads with all the fervor he could muster.  Each time one fell before him, it was replaced by another.  And another after that.

Over and over, he ripped through the threads until, at last, he managed to sever the final in that cluster.  The second that final string snapped, it rebounded like a bridge cable, snaking backward and destroying a handful of others.

As it did, he saw that a bit of the wooden cavern crumbled into nothing, dissipating in less than a second.  It was as if it had never existed. 

That spurred Zeke forward.  That single cable had taken nearly a week to sever.  It was an incredible amount of time, given the relatively small results.  And yet, Oberon had promised him fifty years.  Zeke intended to use it.

If there was one thing Zeke could do well, it was persist.  Throughout his time since being reborn in that troll cave, he’d endured so much.  And no matter what assailed him, he just kept moving forward.  Then, in Hell, he’d taken that to an extreme.  He had been through so much – enough to destroy most men, body, mind, and soul. 

And yet, he was still there.

He leveraged that unique ability to the task before him.  And as time passed, one thread after another rebounded.  Each time, a little of the cave crumbled until, after nearly fifteen years of persistent work, the entire thing collapsed.

Zeke didn’t stop.

He refused to let something as small as being crushed by thousands of tons of wood slow him down.  He barely even noticed it, so focused was he on unraveling the threads. 

Years passed as they continued to unspool.  And in that time, he began to understand them in a way he’d never been able to before.  He couldn’t put it into words.  Rather, he just intuitively knew them, and almost as well as he knew his own mind.  That increased familiarity allowed him to go faster and faster, and the second major thread fell apart after only five years.

The next took a year.

The next after that, six months.

Suddenly, his goal didn’t seem so unreasonable.  He went through it like a chainsaw, leveraging his power to great effect. 

But the size of the task was unreasonable.  The tree goddess – or at least, the form she had taken – was the size of a planet.  Millions of threads, each one comprised of millions more.  It was an unsurmountable peak.

So, even when the fiftieth year dawned, he’d barely progressed to the halfway point. 

That was when Aja began to stir.  Zeke could see the threads shifting.  Contracting.  The collapsed wooden walls pressed in on him. 

So, he did the only thing he knew to do – attacked.

Ever severed thread had introduced a point of weakness.  And by that point, he had torn millions of them apart. 

So, he used [Primordial Wrath], hoping it would be enough.  Otherwise, Oberon’s sacrifice would have been for nothing.