Goddess Reborn: An Isekai LitRPG — The Mirror World Progression Saga

In the training yard outside the original Geirkosi hideout, Sammy watched the two men finish up the staff training sweating and exhausted. Orswyth offered the Personal Refreshment spell to Remus to speed cleaning up, but he declined, stating he’d gladly be doing it ‘the old-fashioned way.’ With that, he said his goodbyes, received his thank-yous, and departed.

Orswyth utilized the spell on himself, however, wiping away all sweat and dirt from his person, before plopping down next to Sammy on a nearby wooden bench with a great sigh of relief. “I admit, my body is completely expended of all usefulness, Your Majesty, but my mind remains sharp and ready for this ‘other thing’ you intended to broach.”

Sammy smiled as she studied him. “Like you don’t know what it is!”

Orswyth’s expression was coy. “So it’s a done deal, is it?”

Rolling her eyes, Sammy shrugged. “I think it is — because I know you — but the choice remains yours, of course. We can pass on it, and perhaps broach the thing another day.”

Her Hierophant nodded slowly, then suddenly grinned. “I appreciate that, but you were right: it’s a done deal. Let’s do it, Goddess.”

Sammy didn’t hide her enthusiasm. She thrust her fists up in victory. “Yes!” She then cleared her throat. “Ahem. So, what smartness changed your mind?”

He met her eyes for a long moment, and finally said simply, “Unity.”

“Unity?” She waited a long few moments for more, but Orswyth had looked away, introspective. In fact, he was the one waiting. “Okay. Um. If I had to puzzle it out, I guess I’d assume you mean obtaining more capability and truth helps the organization and the greater vision. Something like that?”

He might’ve nodded slightly. “The train goes nowhere without the execution of a team, without all the members doing what is expected of them. If they do their best, if they excel, then it arrives ahead of schedule.”

“Right. Train metaphor. Pretty solid. Smokin’. Heh.”

Orswyth smiled faintly. “An encapsulation. What we’re up against needs every trick, every advantage and mechanism of power, every little bit of, ah…”

“Wait, I think I know what you were going to say! You can say it. Go ahead and say it!”

“Wisdom.” He chuckled. “I have no doubt that I will still change from this, but I also have no doubt it will orient me in the direction I must go to serve my purpose in the grand scheme.”

“Now we’re talkin’!” Sammy slapped her hands together and rubbed them while waggling her eyebrows. “Ready for the motherfucking magic, young man?”

“I believe I was born motherfucking ready, Your Majesty.”

Barking a laugh, Sammy targeted him and spoke the words. “Would you deign to see a vision of your future and be illumined by it, User?”

Taking a deep, deep breath, Orswyth nodded. “I do.”

The black void of the System Deck returned once more, and Sammy’s mind was subsumed and synthesized into her role as the Fortuneteller.

Orswyth was… unassuming. He looked much the same but seemed a bit shorter and thinner, and his beard was extra long — down to his stomach. His simple robes were gray- no. They were just… opaque, with somehow no color in some impossible manner, as drab as gruel that had been sapped of what meager ‘spectrum oomph’ it should have.

As soon as one’s vision kilted out of his focus, he seemed entirely transparent, just a bare outline.

Super weird.

The table and two chairs were industrious oak, weathered, ancient, uncomfortable, and completely implacable. The craftsmanship was supreme. Strangely, there was no question mark in the center.

The Fortuneteller was not happy with this. She ‘tsked’ and glared at ‘Orswyth.’ “This is highly against protocol.”

The one thing that Sammy had not seen with respect to the bearded, robed entity was his eyes because he had been gazing placidly at the table. When he turned them to meet the Fortuneteller, it was like being the target of stars turned into lasers. Bright intensity, piercing and pure, illuminating all it cast upon with some alien, incredible energy.

Strangest of all, being bathed in it held no pain, though she was sure it was not her ‘immunity’ doing work, not in that place. It was more the energy’s nature. Such intensity, yet it was like being held, not attacked.

But when the embrace touched Sammy, and somehow, even more, beyond it to ‘nudge’ her higher soul and identity, Sammy felt such intense sadness and despair she would’ve broken down and cried on the spot were she in control of the avatar there.

But she wasn’t, the whole thing was thankfully brief and, though it was the very pinnacle of strange, the nudge did pretty much nothing. The presence seemed even more saddened by these results and relented, the star eyes ceasing their intensity and looking away.

The Fortuneteller hissed audibly, plainly even more annoyed. Meanwhile, Sammy — still bewildered and fighting down the melancholy — found the whole event hard for her mortal brain to process. It was almost like one soul trying to rouse another, but… not quite. ‘Turn around to face’ perhaps.

Whatever it was and whatever the reason, it ain’t happening, that’s for sure. Might as well try to throw an egg through a wall.

Before the Fortuneteller could lay into him, the entity declared in a wizened yet rich voice free of any accent, “As if I care about that, you overgrown phantom.” He turned his back on her to walk slowly over to the chair on the opposite side, pulling it out and sitting down with a weary air.

The Fortuneteller was a bundle of annoyance as she continued glaring the whole while, but her opposing entity was entirely unaffected.

At first, he sat there staring at the wood in front of him, apparently lost in thought. Then he looked up and said, “Well? As Sammy would say, let’s get this show on the road, bitch.”

The Fortuneteller’s eyes widened as she stiffened. “Excuse me?!” Meanwhile, Sammy was absolutely guffawing internally at his audacity. It was not something she’d ever get upset about personally.

The old, robed man presented his hands in a shrug. “Not you — it’s simply a figure of speech. I’m sorry your protocols don’t do much for your sense of humor.” He gestured a hand at the chair opposite to him down the table. “Shall we?”

“You’d do well to remember who the host is here, Orswyth Maglion.” The emphasis held no small amount of venom.

“I’m not arguing who owns this void of nothing, trust me. I have my own empire of arguably less. As if these are ‘places’ to begin with. Pft.”

Empire? Is it a metaphor, or…?

“You aren’t helping Samantha like this, outsider. You’ll only confuse her, just like you did with that idiotic statement. I’ve been standing here because I am waiting for you to dispense with this travesty and subsume. This is an inappropriate arrangement to proceed with.”

“Is it, now? Tashome is strongly interfacing with his own higher self, in part because of your machinations by this method.”

The Fortuneteller absolutely seethed at him. Her arms crossed in front of her. “It’s a different situation. You are damaging things for both Orswyth and Samantha by behaving this way. Can’t you see how jarring this will be?”

“The truth hurts, but he is a big boy and she is a big girl, last I checked. Do you even know why I am here like this? No. Because you can’t, because you’re a snapshot of experiences and intentions. Would you like to know if I have a reason?”

Hands slapped the table in an angry showing. “I could just snap my fingers and you’ll be gone in a flash! With nothing to show for this exchange!”

“That’s cute.” The robed man offered a nonchalant hand like ‘Be my guest.’ “Go ahead. Do it.”

The Fortuneteller bared her teeth as she snarled audibly at him.

The robed man continued, “You can’t. That’s not how this works, and if you did that, you might be responsible for majorly fucking things up. I don’t believe it is possible for you to consciously do that. Now. Are you done posturing? I’m not going anywhere.” He folded his hands on the table, waiting patiently.

The chair on the Fortuneteller’s side telekinetically jerked out. “Fine.” She straightened herself with more dignity than she had been showing and calmly sat down. “I’ve never wanted to get a reading over with quicker.”

Cards shot from out of nowhere from two sides like a cascade, assembling themselves into a deck right in front of the robed man’s face. They shuffled with incredible speed before his unblinking eyes and then dropped to the table, where they fanned out in front of him.

“Now, go ahead and pick your favorite, you cosmic jackass,” the Fortuneteller commanded, petty derision in every syllable.

Wow. This has really been something to see. Not sure what to make of it, though.

The robed man eyed the cards expressionlessly for a straight minute, with the Fortuneteller tapping her fingers impatiently, staring right at his face all the while.

Finally, he reached a hand out and flipped his finger. Every single card turned over on its face at once.

The Fortuneteller shot up so fast her chair fell over backward. “What the hell are you doing?! You cant-” She looked around wildly, as if expecting reality to crack in two. In the next moment, she was relieved because it didn’t. “It’s an illegal gesture, you literally can’t.” Finally, she focused her ire again on the one sitting in Orswyth’s place. “You fucking idiot! How is someone of your intellect so-”

“I wish to speak with Samantha,” the robed man interrupted, firmly but calmly. “You aren’t necessary for the next bit.”

Mocking laughter erupted from the Fortuneteller, a cackling verging on hysterical as she shook her head. “Nyahahaha… oh ho! So bold!” She suddenly cut herself off and slapped her hands on the table. “That will never happen, you fuck. I’m two seconds from giving up on this whole endeavor! So help me, if you don’t-”

“Fortune come and Fortune go,

On a wheel, turn to and fro;

Change the game, now — on a dime,

So I gamble for old [Time]...”

The Fortuneteller was stunned and frozen stiff by the words. They washed through her like some kind of magic with a code, like it was turning her gears back with each syllable. When they were done, she just said softly, “I see,” and then she was totally gone, banished into the ether, with Sammy left in control.

She wasn’t really sure she wanted to be. In that place, she’d been doing nothing but relying on her, effectively invoking her continuously. Dealing with a potentially problematic cosmic entity wasn’t her idea of a smart plan.

Oh, man…

The robed man just sat there watching her, star-eyes glowing. Fortunately, they didn’t pierce or hold in the same way when he was not ‘focusing.’ Looking away almost instantly, swallowing a lump in her throat, Sammy turned to the fallen chair. She physically busied herself picking it up and setting it right to finally sit down in it, mostly as a distraction.

She scooched the chair audibly up to the table and folded her hands on the top. “So, um… hi there? I’m Sammy. No doubt my reputation precedes me, heh…” The figure simply stared and waited. “Right. Uh. How do I address you?”

“You could only address me inaccurately. I can’t even form the words right with this monkey god brain. We’re not meant to be trying to peer through them. Imagine yourself trying to speak as a piece of feces paper.”

Sammy squinted her eyes in confusion, but then got it. “You mean toilet paper. And that is to say, three-dimensional to two-dimensional?”

“Yes, exactly. Exactly in my intention for the analogy, not to say the comparison is exact. Far from it. At the minimum, you’d have to add a shit stain. Two — one from us and one from the contrivances such as yourself. I think that’s fair.”

“No doubt. Can we even talk about this stuff here, by the way?”

He did a very old-man-style harrumph. “Of course. Surely the featureless void is a cue? The lack of a System?”

“But there’s the System Deck, right? Isn’t it listening?”

“Only if you stretch the meaning terribly. No, not in any way that is a threat. The rules that you need to follow here are forced. If something ‘shouldn’t,’ it won’t. It can seem otherwise.”

“But you were able to flip all the cards over, though that’s a ‘shouldn’t,’ right?”

“It was legal because I flipped the script, as the Fortuneteller was slow to realize. I passed the game to you, to determine Orswyth’s fate by a different sort of gamble. In this instance, I am now the Facilitator.”

“Oh.”

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Nice.