Universe's End

Rory had made mistakes in the past.

Sometimes it was that he screwed up a project, which would often literally blow up in his face. Other times, it was biting off more than he could chew. Hell, when he had been in college, he had accidentally slept with the girl one of his buddies was crushing on without ever realizing they were the same person.

Which had been resolved with a brawl that left him with a black eye and a bloody nose. His friend had been basically uninjured, except for a bruised knuckle, which was to be expected when you got boxed out by a six-foot-eight college lineman. But by the end of the week, they had been back to drinking beers together and yelling over the poor performance of the White Sox.

Anyway

The point was, Rory was accustomed to making mistakes as a natural part of life.

But.

But even with that understanding, this was new for him, a mistake on a rather grand scale.

Ehkorrus had seen better days. Or so he was told, as the Ehkorrus he was presented with was vastly different from the Ehkorrus of his memories, the only two things that remained familiar being the staggeringly tall Star Blood Sequoia that stood as a sentinel toward the back of the city, and the three concentric walls that were now massively further apart to give space for the much larger city.

While the inner city hadn't been touched, the same couldn't be said for anything beyond the first wall. A battle of epic proportions had been waged, resulting in tens of thousands of dead monsters and at least a few hundred dead citizens.

Which also was a bit odd for Rory to wrap his mind around, given Ehkorrus hadn't even had fifty citizens when he'd left some six or seven decades ago.

While his arrival had saved the city, it had also been his fault that things had escalated so far, all because he had been absent for far longer than initially intended.

Something Apostolos was making very well-known.

"E.O.N. damn it, Rory!" Apostolos slammed his fist on the table, glaring at his adopted older brother. "Sixty-four years! We thought you'd be gone ten, twenty years at the most. Sixty-four!?"

"In my defense-"

"No, shut the hell up, you let me talk." Apostolos glared at Rory. Looking at him, it was strange how Rory felt, for as much as the towering man Apostolos had become, in his eyes, he still saw that same child or teenage boy.

"People died because you lost track of time. An awful fucking lot of them. Several tier sevens, and around four hundred tier sixes."

"Which I'm very sorry about-"

Apostolos glared at him once more, shutting him up once again.

Still glaring at him, Apostolos finally deflated, dropping into a seat across the table from him, looking exceptionally tired.

"I get it, most of the people who passed you have absolutely zero connection to it, it's hard to internalize that, and you never were the overly invested type anyway, for those outside your 'inner circle,' and that circle was what, maybe fifteen people total by the time you left?"

Rory remained silent.

"This is for you."

Sliding a piece of paper across the table, Rory glanced down at it, confused.

"Why does this have three names on it?"

"Because while you may not have had a connection to most of those who passed, those three you will. Starting from the top is the order of when it occurred."

Reading the first name, Rory frowned deeply.

"Old Man Kal? You mean he's… dead? Just like that? I thought he got a few ascensions under his belt."

"Tier four at time of death. Since most Ehkorrus citizens brought here were teenagers or children, we lack extensive evidence. However, the prevailing theory suggests that the later you achieve ascension into your natural lifespan, the fewer years you gain. Kal was already in his seventies or eighties when he appeared here. It bought him another three or four decades, but far from the theoretical max of a tier four, which we assume to be around two hundred."

Moving to the next name, Rory's eyes widened.

"Viviann? How? I get that she wasn't exactly a spring chicken either, but she wasn't already in her twilight years when she arrived; she should have had more than enough time to keep climbing."

"It wasn't old age," Apostolos said. "A failed attempt at salvaging Ehkorrus's impending death spiral."

"What happened?"

"It stems first from the problem of tier limitations. You familiar?"

"Can't say I am," Rory answered truthfully.

"Thought so," Apostolos sighed. "Say you have a tier four crafter. If they attempt to make gear rated for a tier five, it loses potency, becomes less durable, and is less sharp; the point is that it becomes weaker. Only items crafted from a moment of inspiration seem to break this soft cap. You likely never picked up on that because the things you made were either made for yourself, so they were tier appropriate, or they were a product of inspiration. Therefore, they wouldn't have suffered that limitation anyway."

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"Interesting, but how is this relevant to Viviann's passing?"

"Not enough high-tier crafters to make gear for our tier sevens and even our tier sixes. Crafters grow slower than combatants after all. So, Viviann proposed an idea to tackle the problem from a different direction: Runes. You used to make new runes all the time. The issue is that creating new runes is essentially impossible for any of our inscription artisans. If we could create new runes, we could have explored new approaches to address our problem, which is where Viviann came in. She undertook a decade-long project, a ritual to infuse her inscription skill with concepts and significance based on The Architect, in the hopes of evolving her skill. Using the tome that you left behind as a catalyst for the ritual, when it was finally undertaken, it seemed for a bit to be working, until it backfired, likely due to being a novel ritual."

"And this killed her?"

"More than that," Apostolos sighed. "From what we've managed to put together based on her notes and such on the project, we assume that rather than replicate those elements needed from your version of the skill, it instead attempted to take them forcibly."

"Meaning I killed her," Rory exhaled slowly, closing his eyes and rubbing his brow. "Fuck."

"It was a failure of proper research," Apostolos said, trying not to blame Rory. "Had more time been dedicated to it, perhaps the error would have been realized sooner. In the end, she set herself up as a tier four against a tier seven in a tug-of-war over core significance. Without realizing what was happening, it wouldn't take a tier seven much more than an offhanded sneeze to end a tier four crafter."

Mind racing, Rory shook his head, trying to recall exactly when it happened.

"I was in the middle of my own ritual that involved spreading my awareness. I was searching for a needle in a shitstack… anyway, I assumed I left myself open to an opportunistic monster, something that shouldn't have been possible based on the monsters we'd encountered so far. Turns out I was right."

It was a sobering realization. Purposefully or not, Rory had killed someone whom he'd considered the closest thing to a 'lover' during his entire time on Aelia.

Alright, lover might have been doing some heavy lifting; they were closer to friends with benefits, but it didn't change the internalized regret he was feeling.

Fuck.

Had it been someone like Apostolos, it would have been more than simple regret he felt, but Rory's mind had been hardened after so many decades and ascensions.

Finally, looking at the last name on the list, his eyebrows furrowed.

"Manda?"

"Just today," Apostolos said. "We were collapsing inward when Manda made it clear to Violet and Marcie that he had a way to turn the tide, at least temporarily, by maximizing his external boost effect on his shadow beasts. He had told them it would put him out of the fight for a while, so they assumed it was just a taxing application of his skill."

"But he fed everything into it," Rory said, already guessing the outcome.

"Exactly," Apostolos crossed his arms, shaking his head before snorting, his eyes shining with a hint of wetness. "One of the original seven, gone. You know, he used to have a crush on Violet, but as he grew older, he became more like a brother-in-law or an uncle to the household. I'm sure my kids will be able to handle it, but man, what the hell do we tell my grandkids?"

As sobering as the flow of conversation had been, nothing froze Rory like what Apostolos just said.

"So many people. So many damn people." Apostolos shook his head again, oblivious to the fact that Rory's entire world was reeling.

"Say that again."

"So many damn people?" Apostolos said, half asking as he looked at Rory, confused.

"Before that. What you said before that."

"About Manda?"

"No, after that."

Apostolos frowned, looking confused before realization hit him.

"Oh. Huh, I didn't mention that, did I?"

After the wave had settled, Apostolos had given him directions to his house to hide out in, knowing his adopted brother and former master well enough to guess that he would likely prefer to hide out for a bit as things were settled with the rest of the city. Meaning there hadn't been much else as far as casual conversation went, meaning that Rory was exceptionally out of the blue.

"No. No, you did not. Explain. Now."

"So, uh," Apostolos, for the first time since he had shown up, looked around with an expression other than loss and anger, now looking somewhat embarrassed as he rubbed at the back of his neck. "Well, Violet and I sort of got married."

"No shit?" Rory couldn't help himself, laughing out loud. "No fucking way. She actually broke you?"

"Aye."

"And this mention of kids…?"

"Two," Apostolos said before glancing to the side. "For the time."

"God damn, how old are they?"

"Forty-ish now."

"Holy fuck," Rory felt as if he'd been struck, the chair he was seated in falling backward as he stared up at the ceiling. "You've got kids."

"And grandkids. Six of 'em."

"And motherfucking grandkids. What the shit?" Rory felt as if he'd been stuffed into the spin cycle of a wash machine. "Fuck. Fuck. My timescale is so utterly fucked. Kids? And Grandkids?"

The words continued to tumble around in his mind.

"You want to meet them?" Apostolos asked after a moment of silence, his face lifting. The mention of his family was the one thing that could offset his dour mood after the catastrophic wave.

"Fucking duh," Rory all but shouted from where he continued to lie on the ground.

"Good, it would have sucked if the Godfather of my kids and Grand Godfather of my grandkids didn't want to meet them."

"You're… you're messing with me, right?" Rory asked, head snapping up to look in Apostolos's direction.

"Nay. It's one of the only reasons I could convince them that you ever actually existed, if I explicitly made you their godfather."

Kids. Grandkids. Godfather. People I knew are dead. What the fuck?

He'd spent so much time alone with just another founder and a monster for company, he'd forgotten just how normal people could be. How normal life could be.

Has it really been that long? I mean, of course, it has, but fuck, why does it feel like barely any time has passed at all? I mean, it doesn't, but also it does… fuck.

Brain reeling at the dichotomy between his perception of time and the actual march of time, Rory felt like his head was splitting until a hand was stuck into his range of vision.

"Thanks," Rory huffed as he let Apostolos pull him to his feet.

Looking at one another, the two men were silent for several seconds. Rory was uncertain what to make of everything, given how much things had changed for Apostolos. At the same time, for Rory, it felt like almost nothing had changed aside from his personal power.

The moment was only broken when, at last, Apostolos stepped forward. Half expecting to be punched or struck for his failings at his late arrival, Rory was mildly surprised when the other man instead wrapped his arms around him in a tight bear hug.

"E.O.N. damn it, Rory," Apostolos grumbled. "Sixty-four fucking years. Everyone thought you died, or otherwise never even existed. I was the only one who held out hope. Not because of longing for our dear Founder to swoop in and save us, but because I missed my damn brother. Then, finally, I broke. I forced myself to accept what seemed obvious to everyone else. That you were dead. And then what do you fucking do? Drop out of the fucking sky like you had been waiting there the entire time to come and save the damn day."

Hesitant for only a single moment, Rory reached his arms around and embraced Apostolos back, the closest thing he had to family.

"Sorry, bud."

"Fuck you," Apostolos said as Rory heard something.

"Did... did you just sniffle? Are you crying?" Rory snickered as he pulled away from the bear hug after a moment.

"Oh, screw you, so what if I am?" Apostolos wiped at the corner of his eyes, wiping away the obvious tears, "I thought I was about to lose everything. I thought I had failed you, that the crown jewel you entrusted me to protect would fall. So, you know what? Yeah, it's been an emotional day, and when I'm alone in the safety of my own home with my brother, I don't mind shedding some tears."

Shaking his head and laughing, a quiet airy sound, Rory pulled Apostolos back in for a second crushing hug, thumping him on the back.

"Missed you too, brother."