Chapter 709 - Resetting

It took three more days for Zeke to truly get ahold of himself, and only then did Eveline reawaken.  But for a whispered assurance that she was okay, she remained silent, though.  As if she hadn’t fully recovered from the ordeal.  Zeke knew that he’d shielded her from the worst of the experience, but the exposed Framework – and the enemy trapped within – was too powerful for him to completely control or contain.

He could only hope that she would recover in time.

Throughout his recovery, the shiny black figure that Zeke now knew was the Waymaster’s drone – one of hundreds of thousands – kept him company. At times, it answered his questions, but mostly, it stood silent sentry over the recovering Zeke.  It was not comfortable, being in its presence.

But after what he’d experienced between realities, Zeke had difficulty fearing anything in his world.  Next to what he’d endured, they were nothing.  It made even his time in Hell seem tame by comparison. 

At times, Zeke felt his mind threatening to unravel.  Whenever he tried to remember specifics about that world of threads, he felt himself slipping into insanity.  Once, he took it too far and ended up catatonic and drooling on the floor – a state from which he didn’t recover for hours. 

The lesson was clear – he needed to avoid even thinking about it all.

However, he was also curiously drawn to those memories.  He felt like he was only a few steps from understanding.  He’d seen a few patterns, and if he could just concentrate for a little longer, he might have figured it all out.  He might have seen to the truth underlying the entire Framework.

It was there, tantalizingly out of reach.  The Waymaster hadn’t lied.  Zeke was certain of that.  But the eldest of the greater gods did not know everything.  He couldn’t.  He was as incapable of truly understanding the Framework as a bird was of comprehending advanced mathematics.  It just wasn’t in his nature.

But Zeke was different.  He was no god.  He was a primordial.  And that nature came with abilities – and responsibilities – to see things no mere god could.  Yet, he wasn’t strong enough. 

Even with what he’d seen in his status, he knew that he was a long way from reaching that point.  To remind himself of how far he’d come – and how far he had yet to go – Zeke recalled that status:

Name

Ezekiel Blackwood

Class

Primordial (Nascent)

Race

Titan (A-1)

Core

Divine (A-2)

Body

Divine (A-1)

Energy

Divine (B-9)

Affinity

Divine (A-9)

He’d ventured to ask the Waymaster about the readout, the drone, upon hearing his status, fell silent for a long time.  Finally, he’d explained how it all worked.  At present, his attributes – Core, Body, Energy, and Affinity – were on the level of a greater god.  Somewhere close to Simeon’s attributes, though comparison was difficult, considering that their statuses looked so different.

However, what truly set Zeke apart was his class.  From what the Waymaster understood, everyone else in the Ethereal Realm had a static class that would not evolve unless they chose to ascend to The End.  That included lesser and greater gods.  For Zeke, his class seemed more facile.  At present, it was at the Nascent stage, but it would one day reach the next stage, which the Waymaster posited would be the Eminent stage.  When that happened, his power would grow significantly. 

After that would come the Sovereign and Paragon stages.

“How do you know this?” Zeke had asked.

The Waymaster, through his drone, had answered, “You are not the first Primordial.  I am old enough to remember the tales of the last one, though even then, they had faded mostly to legend and myth.”

Zeke frowned at the remembered conversation. 

As far as he could tell, his attributes had all risen by a significant degree, but that made sense to him.  He was all but freshly ascended to the Ethereal Realm, and he’d already slain two of the most powerful denizens of the realm.  It would have been odder if he hadn’t made significant gains. 

Still, it also told him that he would reach the peak – at least in terms of his attributes – well before he achieved the highest grade in terms of his class.  And he knew he wouldn’t survive long in the next realm – if that was even the right word – if he wasn’t as powerful as possible before ascension.

He shook his head and leaned back against the white wall.  It really wasn’t a wall, at least as far as he could tell.  There was nothing solid there.  Just an endless expanse of white nothingness.  But he could lean against it, which should not have been possible.  However, after what he’d seen outside his reality, that designation held a lot less weight.  Nothing in the so-called Void fell under the auspices of possibility, and he suspected that trend to continue going forward.

The only answer was to adjust his mindset accordingly, lest he lose his way.  That was easier said than done.

It wasn’t long after he’d regained a grip on his mind that he began to think of the future.  Simeon was gone. So was Mak’tar.  That left only five more greater gods that he would need to kill.

And the Waymaster, though Zeke wasn’t certain if that was something he wanted.  Even if it was possible – which wasn’t certain – the Waymaster had helped him.  Just like Oberon.

“Nothing is ever simple,” he remarked to himself.

The Waymaster’s drone heard him, and it came to life with a simple twitch of its head.  “We are dealing with the very fabric of reality,” it said in the Waymaster’s voice.  “Complexity is a requirement.”

Zeke shook his head.  “I’m aware of that.  Plus, I wasn’t talking to you.”

The drone cocked its head to the side. “Curious.”

Then, it went limp, clearly deactivating. 

For the next couple of days, Zeke continued to recover, but mostly, he just spiraled as he considered the implications of what he’d seen.  The Framework was the key, but it was far too complicated for him to understand.  If he could just endure the environment without unraveling, he would be in a much better position. 

And he suspected he knew the solution.

Progression.  It stood to reason that the stronger he became, the more he could take.  The Waymaster had implied as much when he’d revealed that if Zeke had been stranded inside the Framework before he’d killed Simeon, he never would have survived.  Not even for a few moments, much less the few days he’d remained in that abyss of threads.

Finally, the Waymaster’s drone whirred back to life and said, “It is time for you to return to your domain.  Follow me.”

With that, the humanoid figure turned and strode away.  Suddenly, the room – such as it was – seemed much larger.  Zeke rose, then followed his guide down what had become a featureless white hall.  Their footsteps didn’t echo, and the air didn’t move.  In fact, Zeke belatedly realized that he wasn’t even breathing.  Simply put, he only existed, and without any of the normal implications that came with that state.

They walked for a few hours, and throughout the journey, nothing changed.  Not until, at last, a door suddenly loomed in the distance.  It looked no different from any other door – like something he might have found in an office back on Earth – but it glowed in his senses.  He focused on it, and his mind reeled.

Threads.

Millions of tiny strings, all writhing in every direction.  He closed his eyes, but nothing changed.  He could still feel them.  Even with his eyes closed, he could still see them. 

He stopped and fell to his knees, his breath suddenly coming in ragged gasps as the memory of the void slammed into his mind.  Even as he labored for oxygen, he got nothing to fill his lungs.  For a brief second, he ceased to exist in any way that mattered.  Instead, he was just a bundle of threads, no different than that door. 

But then, something else flooded out of him, enveloping those strings and turning them solid.  Over the next few moments, his heartbeat steadied, and his breathing calmed.  His mind was the last to still, but when it did, he realized that divine energy had been the stabilizing agent. 

There was something there.  A key he didn’t even know he needed.

But as he returned to normal, he lost his grip on precisely what it meant. 

Zeke rose to his feet to find the Waymaster’s drone staring down at him.  “Are you well?” it asked.

Zeke shook his head. “Not really.  I wish I was.  But I won’t slow you down again,” he answered. 

“Very well.”

With that, the drone continued on.  As it turned out, the door was much further away than Zeke’s initial impression suggested, and it took almost an hour to reach that destination.  Strangely, the door never changed in his perception – not until they suddenly arrived.

“This is where we part ways.  The door will lead you to Oberon’s domain.  I trust that you can find your own way from there,” the drone stated.  “Good luck.  If you choose to attempt to end my life, know two things.  First, finding me will be quite difficult.  A harrowing process that you are unlikely to survive.  Second, I would prefer to avoid having to kill you.  Do not force my hand.”

Then, the Waymaster’s drone shoved Zeke, and suddenly, he was tumbling through the door.  He slammed into the ground only a moment later, and hard enough to send a shockwave throughout the area.  Trees fell, and the world rippled.  For the briefest of moments, Zeke saw more threads, but he quickly got his perception under control.

Picking himself up, he realized that he remained in his titanic form, though for the life of him, he couldn’t remember if that had been the case in the Void or inside the white room. 

He looked around.  Oberon’s domain was an idyllic paradise, and his arrival point was no different than everything else he’d seen.  However, it only took a second for him to see a shimmer of a thread – barely perceptible – leading off in another direction. 

Zeke was aware that he could simply summon another gate to his tower, but he chose to walk instead.  His mind was still reeling from his recent experiences, and he needed time to reacclimate.  So, he set off, his extraordinarily long legs making quick work of the distance.

Following the thread took him through a forest and into a glade, past a raging river and over a mountain range that would have made the Himalayas look small by comparison.  With his immense power and enormous form, the way was easy enough, and he made good time, covering miles with every passing minute. 

Still, Oberon’s domain was no small place, and eventually, Zeke reached an ocean.  After a few minutes’ consideration, he decided that he didn’t want to go swimming.  He’d had enough of that, both in Hell and during his recent fight against Simeon.  That left him with only one other option – to follow his initial instincts and summon a new gate.

Even so, he hesitated.  He didn’t like to admit defeat.

But in the end, he liked the idea of traversing an ocean even less.  So, without further hesitation, he summoned the gate and, after it had formed, stepped through. 

The scene that greeted him on the other side was both familiar and alien.  The Entry Hall itself looked the same as ever before, but much of it had been converted into a makeshift infirmary.  Thousands of bodies lay before him.  Some were clearly dead, but a few still clung to life. 

Among them were Spiritweavers and other healers, each one looking haggard and well-worn.  It was a hive of activity as kobolds bore their injured brethren on stretchers, clearly making their way toward the nearest teleporter. Presumably, their destination was the Crimson Pools. 

“Ak-toh!” yelled one kobold.  The screamed title was followed by echoes of the same, and before Zeke knew what was happening, every eye was upon him.  Then, almost as one, the kobolds fell to their knees and prostrated themselves.

“Zeke!” came a familiar voice.  Zeke turned to see Talia rushing toward him.  He remembered to release his titanic form, and by the time he returned to his human shape, Talia had hit him like a missile, wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug.  “You’re back.”

“Sorry it took me so long,” he said, awkwardly embracing her with one arm.