Leftover Apocalypse

The stupid long staircase up the mountain was trying to kill me.

It probably would look amazing if it wasn't still dark out, and I even found myself trying to get a night shot with my cell phone camera. It needed a little more light to keep from being grainy, but it still would have done numbers on Instagram. If everything worked out, I could have a pretty successful online presence on Earth. I could post photos from all over the planes, people would just assume they were fake or AI. I could tell it totally straight, give tours of places, and everyone would think I was some amazing filmmaker.

I entertained myself with daydreams for most of the way, but by the end no amount of distraction could hide that this was a very long and very steep set of stairs. How the fuck did other people do this? I was young and in great fucking shape and I wanted to lay down and take a nap. What about old people, or kids, or just people who really enjoyed food? I made myself push forward, and finished the last stretch powered purely by spite.

At the top, I was greeted by some people doing something to what looked like a fancy rowboat. "Good morning!" the first called. "Are you one of the guests for today? I didn't even get the gondola down there yet, did you climb all those stairs?"

Ah. Right, so some sort of hovering boat thing that would fly guests up. Of course. "Yeah, I'm trying to keep in shape."

They both nodded, looking thoughtful, and I went past to the interior. The inside had a sort of brutalist look, lots of big dramatic stone shapes and angles, but every nook and cranny had some statue or sculpture in it that, in contrast to the plain geometric architecture around it, seemed to be all organic flowing lines.

At first glance I thought the ones closest to me were abstract sculptures and the further ones were statues of people, but as I walked I could see that they were all done in the same style that gave the impression of a human form from a distance, but up close were clusters of other things or just swirling shapes. One seemed to all be vines and leaves, another was a jumble of fantastic animals, a third was formed out of seemingly random blobs and squiggles.

Considering where I was I should have known what I was looking at, but I was so busy looking at the details of the sculptures that it didn't click until I found one that was made of smaller sculptures of people and was holding a very familiar shape - Yesrin's Loom. That meant that each of these represented a god, and probably someone had chosen the shapes that went into them very carefully. People for Yesrin because she took on human form, I assumed, but I didn't know enough about the others.

I stopped by one that was different from the others, a number of geometric shapes that didn't look anything like a person but which, as I walked by, lined up so that the empty space between them formed a silhouette. Why depict a god as a missing space?

"Are you a worshiper of Shepre?" a voice asked. I turned and saw a man in comfortable-looking maroon robes, watching me with a small smile.

"Oh. No, I've... never actually been religious."

He nodded and came closer, so he could look at the sculpture from the correct angle with me. "We know little about most of the gods ourselves, despite our best efforts. Few deign to speak with us, and even when they do it can be difficult to know what they are truly like. Shepre is associated with the power of entropy, and is worshiped by several orders. The Order of the Quiet End serves travelers to the Necropolis, for example.

"There is also a rather destructive group called the Hierophants of Oblivion," he continued, "that has been causing trouble ever since the fall of the Empire; the founder received a message from the Shepre that they took as a desire from the god to see this whole world perish so they could start anew - this goal has obviously not made the group popular."

He walked towards the next one, gesturing eagerly. This sculpture was all just thin lines, most straight but some in repeating waves. Again, they had been arfully positioned to form a humanoid shape from several angles. "This one," the man said, "is Okulmere, who is associated with light and magnetism and some other related concepts. We only standardized the name a few dozen years ago, since Okulmere never makes direct contact. We try to put the gods' unknowable names into our language as best we can, but like everything we learn from them we have to just interpret to the best of our ability and hope that we're close."

He suddenly perked up. "Oh! It's still dark out, for a few more minutes. Come, come! See the main observing room!"

I hurried after him, up more stairs, and a few minutes later we exited into that huge dark glass dome the telescope was sticking out of. From inside, I could see that the glass was transparent but seemed to show the stars way brighter than they should have been - while everything else was nearly pitch black even though the sky should have been getting lighter.

Seeing my confused expression, the man answered my question before I could ask it. "The lights from the stars all have a similar quality - I don't know the technical term for it, that's not my area, but it means they can isolate only that type of light and give us a better view. Full daylight is still an issue, and clouds can get in the way of course, but way up here in the mountains we're above most clouds."

Some other people were working in this room, all wearing similar comfy-looking robes but in dark blue. Some waved, most ignored us. I climbed up a spiral staircase to a platform higher in the observatory, and found chairs set up so you could lean way back and stare up at the stars. Each had a huge lens on an articulated metal arm, so you could sort of zoom in on whatever part of the sky you wanted.

I lowered myself into the closest chair and played around with the lens, though it really needed a way to focus if they wanted it to be more useful. It didn't matter, even without that this was the best view of the stars I'd had since arriving in fantasyland. The distinct bands of stars for each plane were more visible than ever, some nearly overlapping while others were far across the sky. A blue-robed woman sat down next to me.

"Welcome," she said, "do you know what you're looking at?"

"Uh. Kinda? I know the stars are all in these rings, and that they correspond to the planes. But I was wondering... are they really big and really far away, or only kinda big and just a little further than the moon? And is the sun actually a hole into another plane, or is it a ball like the world is?"

She grinned. "Good questions! The stars grow over time, accumulating shells around them, but the core of a star is about twenty-four feet across, give or take. They have one, fully intact, at the royal palace of Romatna. I was able to see it once, it's amazing. Stars that come loose from the firmament generally get pulled into Zeti and are destroyed, but a handful have been collected over the ages."

Well, that answered that at least. I didn't know a lot about Zeti, just that it was a plane I hadn't heard people talk about much. Before I could say anything, the woman answered the other half of my question.

"As for the sun," she said, "it's both - a portal into Botara, and a large sphere. We have a portal here that we can use to send measuring devices through, and while the type of energy isn't exactly the same scholars think it changes somewhat as it travels through the void and through the air above us. There's even an expedition planned for the Grand Alignment, where a small team will go through! They expect to be able to survive for almost thirty-six minutes!"

Surviving on a plane that served as the sun for more than half an hour did sound impressive, but it also sounded like a terrible idea. Who would be willing to do something like that? What would even be the point, other than almost dying? Bragging rights, maybe? Probably they had some scientific tests they'd be doing, but... yeah, there was no way anyone could convince me to visit the sun.

The woman launched into a talk about the stars and how they moved, but almost immediately I was lost and before I could ask any questions someone in maroon robes called me away and let me know that the time had come. He led me down under the building into a cave - a very nice, artistically carved cave with plush carpeting - and introduced me to my "guide".

"My name is Pilkan," the grandfatherly man said, "and I'll be helping to establish a connection and interpret what you see. You see this large alcove, just over there? Yes, good, come with me and you'll be sitting in that chair in the center. I'll take a spot by the entrance, where -"

A woman in a lab coat was looking at me, concerned, and then walked backwards away from me as she smiled.

Whoa.

"Oh, we're off to an early start," Pilkan said, "it seems that whatever god wants to speak with you has trouble with temporal alignment. That was a backwards fragment of a conversation that hasn't happened yet. Quickly, have a seat."

I sat in the chair, and

my third eye

opened involuntarily

as

A gearshift slid from reverse to drive. "Is this better?" the woman asked, flipping a lens down. "Number one, or number two?" What were those big things full of lenses even called? Had I ever seen one in person? I never needed glasses. "It looks like we're good to go," she said, slamming the hood of the car down and wiping grease on her pristine white lab coat.

I was in a classroom, full of empty desks. No, not empty. There were people there, filling the desks, but they were missing their heads. The teacher looked apologetic. She opened her mouth to speak, and I saw construction crews swarming over a building like ants. The foundation was cracked, and getting worse, but they just kept adding more layers of cake onto it.

Wait, cake?

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Yes, it was a big multi-tiered cake like you'd see at a wedding, and the ninth tier looked terrible. Someone was sliding toothpicks in to make it hold together, but as supports for the next layer were inserted it was clear the whole thing was going to crumble away. The top of the cake was badly burnt, and I was putting more batter directly on top - but that batter was raw.

"Should have just thrown it out," another chef said as he walked by.

The woman took me by the hand and led me out into the construction site. "It was a good attempt," she said, "but the concrete won't set. Also, the cracks are getting worse."

She gestured to a "COMING SOON" sign that showed a very impressive, very modern skyscraper. The sign had been crossed out with red spraypaint, and whatever was being built didn't resemble it at all. The panel of judges that were watching from just in front of the stage seemed upset, but the woman I was talking to chased them away with a broom.

"Sorry," she said, "they're no fun. I believe in you. Number two, or number three?"

Another lens flipped down. Yeah, this one was clearer than the one before. She smoothed out her lab coat and twisted the dials before pulling a little lever. "Number three, or number four?"

This was one of those little Viewmaster toys, I had one growing up. The little wheel of images that clacked into place as the lever went down, showing you some scene from a cartoon or famous landmark. This one was showing the top floor of the building being demolished, burnt cake and raw batter both swept aside. The next slide was a new cake being put in place at the top of the building, welders burning it by mistake and dripping concrete being dumped over the top.

I kept pulling the lever, and the images kept repeating as the wheel went around. "I don't like this," I said, "do you have any others?"

She nodded, smiling, as the car we were in pulled up to a drive-in theater. "The clock is broken, even if it's still moving. Fifth bell, over and over. That's no way to tell time. That's the first one, all panic. The second hand is too busy to help."

I saw a person running between cars, frantically handing tools to people through the windows and taking away trash bags of old cake and disposable plates. They had a ton of arms, but it wasn't enough.

"The third one is starting, shh."

A film was playing on the screen, a train hurtling along the tracks. Someone pulled a lever - number four, or number two - and redirected the tracks to go towards a cliff. They were wearing a mask, no... multiple masks, layered on each other. They had mutiple arms, like the other had, and one was handcuffed to someone else. That person was also wearing a mask - it looked like Tindelus.

"Wait, is he important?" I asked, trying to read the blueprints for the movie, "I think I missed something."

She closed the door behind us, locking us in the little storage room where it was quiet. "Sorry," she said, "these still aren't the right lenses. Focus."

One finger was held up. The wheel, the circle of a clock face, its many hands twitching backwards to repeat forever.

Another finger held up. The end, a train going off the cliff, total destruction and ruin.

A third finger held up. A combination of the two, something destroyed to make something else, but not a circle. Not a wheel. The COMING SOON sign was next to me, the skyscraper covered in blood-red spray paint or frosting or... something was wrong. I didn't like this.

"What is it making? It made things... bad... but it doesn't want to end. What does it want? Not what was supposed to be here, not what is here, what's the third thing?"

The screen lit up, the movie having reached its big climax. The train was coming, it was past the track switch, it was heading towards the cliff. At the last second I pulled an emergency lever, click went the Viewmaster, and I was sitting at the judge's table at the end of the stage, watching people perform. They were making art, and singing, and falling in love. One of them got a line wrong, and I killed them - replacing them with someone else, someone functionally identical.

One of them was too old to play the part of 'Child Building With Blocks' so I killed them too, and put a new child there. Everything was perfect. Everyone was happy and could do anything they wanted, as long as they stuck to the lines I'd given them and played their roles. There was blood-red frosting on my hands from crossing out the picture of the skyscraper, and some of it had gotten on the switch I'd used to send the train towards the cliff.

I stumbled outside, gasping for air, but could see that I was still in there killing and replacing people on stage. The woman in the lab coat took a long drag on a cigarette. "It's not you," she said, "just another mask. Well, some of it might be you by the time this is all done."

She put down a menu in front of me.

The Wheel
Endless Soup of the Day
Unlimited Refills with only minor variations in seasoning
Each bite contains one microgram of poison

The End

The World, Well Done
Cooked by burning the restaurant down
No refunds, no dessert

The Performance
Deconstructed Charcuterie
A selection of the finest morsels, individually wrapped
Served in a sealed glass dome

"I don't want any of these," I said, "Is there anything else?"

The woman grinned and pulled me out of my seat. "Cook for yourself!" she yelled, yanking me behind her as we raced through the construction site, the cars all lined up to watch the big screen. We burst into the kitchen, where beings with too many arms were playing Twister. The woman shoved me forward, and a voice called out. "Right hand blue!"

The first problem was that my hands were stuck together. I had one of those finger-trap things on, where the more you pull the tighter it gets. Not a problem. I pushed my fingers together until I could slide them out. Okay, right hand blue. Unfortunately, while I'd been doing that the others had already moved - and the beings had so many arms that they'd used up all the blue spaces. I was fucked, I never even had a chance to start playing. I turned to complain, and noticed a blue washrag on the ground. Cautiously, I placed my hand on it.

"Right leg yellow!"

I turned slowly, searching until I saw a legal pad laying nearby. I knocked it to the floor, and stepped on it.

"Left hand red!"

And there it was, the dripping red X over that COMING SOON poster. This would be my fault. But it was better than the alternatives. I placed my hand on it, feeling the warm liquid covering me. The woman in the lab coat was right behind me, and whispered in my ear.

"My Unbroken Thread. I'm all out of lenses to try. We'll speak again when we weren't here yet. Pull the lever, we need to repair the foundation."

I blinked.

Where... was I? In a chair. In a cave. Under an observatory? My third eye was wide open, and I was having trouble figuring out if my body was actually mine so I couldn't close it. The old man in the maroon robe came around to stand in front of me, smiling, and helped me up. I caught him looking at the eye, but he didn't say anything about it.

"Well now, that was a long one! Most of the time, the gods either drop the connection or the supplicant can't take it anymore. You held up very well, young lady. I know you're probably feeling a little disoriented, but it would be best to discuss the vision while it's still fresh for both of us. Do you think you can do that?"

I nodded. "Wait, both of us? Did you see the same thing?"

"I was included in the message," he said, "but my mind will have interpreted things differently. That's one of the benefits of having someone here to compare with. First, why don't you try to summarize the vision. Not what you saw, but what you think it meant."

I took a deep breath. "Okay, so... I think the important part was at the end. If I don't do anything, the world is going to end. Though that was still presented as a choice - I guess the choice to not help. There's also... someone... that has a plan to keep looping things so the world never quite has a chance to end. I think that's Sentortzi, and probably that's where the multi-armed things came from. He's... kind of a spider guy."

The old man chuckled. "I think you may be wrong there, but we'll come back to it."

"Okay. Uh, and then there's a third option, which is someone takes over and... I don't know, they make everything look nice but actually they're controlling it and making sure it only happens exactly how they want. And that someone is me, kind of, but not really. I'm pretty sure... okay, so, this isn't from the vision but basically the Clockmaker trapped some fragment of fate and now it's crazy and wants to use someone to take over the world, probably. So that's almost certainly what that option is."

"Ah!" he said, "I'm so glad you mentioned fate. The multi-armed people you saw, I'm fairly certain those were the three fates. They're... somewhat like spirits, in a way, and they were made by the gods to maintain order. If I understood correctly, one of them is still busy doing the normal day-to-day things that should be its job, one is working towards repeating events as you described, and the other is working towards... well. What do you think?"

"It's the thing in the third option, the one that was wearing my face. The one where it makes everything perfect in a bad way."

He nodded. "Yes, but... did you not also see it causing the end?"

I had. "Yeah, it was the one that sent the train over the cliff - or whatever version you saw. Okay. So... it wants to end the world, and then I saw... at the last second I tried to save it and that's what led to it winning. It's... I think it's holding the world hostage, like it started the end of the world so that it could make me help it? Maybe? Actually... fuck, since this all involves time travel and supposedly that can't happen after the Grand Alignment, I bet it would rather threaten the whole world and force someone to take action before allowing its window to pass."

"Or get the opportunity over and over until it wins," he said, "which is probably why the heartfern was mentioned; it's toxic if you eat too much."

"Heartfern...? Oh! Yeah, the poison in the soup. Right. If we let it repeat, sooner or later something will go wrong. It's a stopgap. And the solution was... for me to do something else, some fourth option. But I had to still play by the rules. I think that's about fate too, she was saying that since I'm fighting fate I need to still fulfill fate somehow. Rather than blindly fighting it, I need to lean into it. I need to learn what the requirements are, and meet them in a way that helps me but doesn't end the world."

Pilkan grinned from ear to ear. "Precisely what I would have said! Excellent interpretation, and I do think that's the core message. Other than that, let's see... there was a bit at the beginning that I believe was just Urbunden - that's almost certainly the god you were speaking to - being pleased that they had made the connection. There was also a moment where Shepre showed up and said the whole thing should be scrapped, which may have been the actual god cutting in to the communication. Likewise, the ones that Urbunden initially chased off with a broom may have been other gods. I suspect this is... a bit of a longshot... and the other gods may be doubting you."

"Cool. Great to know."

He laughed. "It is, actually. The more we can understand, the better. Urbunden, at least, seems to have total confidence in you. I am a little confused by what happened at the end, unfortunately. You were asked to repair something, using some specific tool, and Urbunden said they would speak to you again at Proscarion."

"I didn't hear anything about Proscarion, whatever that is, and as far as fixing things... there was mention of pulling a lever, but levers were sort of a recurring theme in my vision so I think that was just like the cakes or movies or construction... just metaphor for something else. Taking action. I don't know."

He paused in thought for a moment. "Well, I can give you directions to the ruins of Proscarion, but it was destroyed in the wars following the fall of the Old Empire. It was another place like this, that was in tune with the gods, but after its destruction there was no sign of it still functioning. Still, it's possible something is there for you."

I stretched, and started wandering back towards the stairs. "Okay. I'll... come back tomorrow before I go and sign off on whatever you want to write up about this vision for your records and stuff."

He walked me back towards the entrance, and as we passed the sculptures of the gods I looked around. "Which one is Urbunden," I asked, "what does she - it - get associated with?"

He directed me to one that was formed from sweeping lines, some carved to look like clouds and others with perfect wheel-ruts in them so they appeared to be roads. There were birds, and humans with backpacks and walking sticks, and a mangled lock, and a hundred little things I couldn't identify. "Urbunden is associated with travel," he said, "and with freedom. She has spoken many times to people who became quite famous as travelers and even wandering heroes, although I understand many of them met with a bad end."

That moment from the vision where I was in a classroom came back to me. All those other people, headless. It was good to know a god believed in me, and a god of freedom and adventure was very much my style, but... had Urbunden believed in all of the others, too? Where had that gotten them?