Universe's End

1. Homecoming… Sort of.

It was only a few minutes later that Rory was seated once more when a figure entered the home that Rory hadn't seen in quite some time, a figure who he recognized, even if she had clearly done some growing up.

"Violet," Rory nodded to the woman as she entered the home.

Her home, Rory corrected internally, reminding himself of the fact that Violet and Apostolos were now married.

With kids!

Trying not to fixate on the fact that the young boy he had raised had gone on to have not just children but grandchildren, Rory instead gave Violet as warm a smile as he could.

Violet, meanwhile, stood there, staring at him for several moments before turning to Apostolos.

"I can't believe you were actually right."

"I knew I was right," Apostolos said, a smile teasing the corner of his lips. "I can't believe I let you all eventually convince me I wasn't."

"I never directly said otherwise," Violet countered.

"Uh-huh, you're as convincing as the kids saying they weren't staying up late on purpose."

Rory found himself oddly entertained as the married couple went back and forth with their banter, as Rory remained a silent observer.

After nearly two minutes straight, Violet finally raised his hands in surrender.

"Fine, fine, I give." Then, turning to Rory, she nodded to him. "Yes, I thought you were dead. I apologize."

"Uhh, no offense taken?"

As amusing as that was, Rory found himself quite surprised when, for the third time of the day, he was caught up in a hug. While the familiarity wasn't unexpected from Apostolos, given their relationship, Rory would have never classified his relationship with Violet as that close of a bond; at best, he was the aloof adult who sometimes did his best to help guide her.

"I'm glad you're alive, and not just because from the sounds of it, you saved all our skins."

"I mean, it's also sort of my fault that-"

"Hush, no need for that. My point is, I'm glad you're alive for Apostolos's sake."

"Hey!" Apostolos chimed up, wincing as he did.

"Oh shut up, you oaf," Violet snorted as she pulled away from Rory, looking him up and down. "E.O.N. above, you really haven't changed much, have you? Sixty years, that's a long time, you know? I was in my early twenties when you left. Now I'm almost ninety. I grew up, had a family, and my kids went on to have kids; even my grandkids are nearing the point where having kids of their own isn't a far-fetched possibility. Yet you're almost exactly as I remember you from my childhood."

It was again a slap in the face to Rory about how twisted his sense of time had become. Perhaps it was due to being unmoored from any civilization, but he viewed time less as days, weeks, months, and years, and more as snapshots between critical junctions. Everything in between those points was like the horizon you could see in the far distance. It didn't actually matter how far away the horizon was or how much distance it covered; to an observer, it always appeared as a single equidistant stretch.

The same couldn't be said for the home he had left behind, where time passed as one would expect, each day an essential moment in their lives.

Pulling away from the hug, Violet glanced at Apostolos as she folded her arms one over the other.

"Anyway, our home is your home. Though I doubt it matters much when your home is everywhere, and your main home is pretty damn hard to miss."

"Yeah, it's grown real damn tall. Oh, also, I saw a random pillar of stone near it. What was that about? You didn't go and make me a monument, did you?" Rory joked.

The two shared a glance, a clear line of dialogue said wordlessly.

"You didn't, did you?"

"We didn't make anything. We had no involvement."

"But?"

"You technically made it."

"The essence spire?" Rory blinked, surprised. "It's gotten pretty damn tall."

"Well, yeah. Over sixty years?"

"Right," Rory muttered.

"That aside," Violet once more glanced at Apostolos with a frown. "We've got a problem. The citizens are being permitted back into the city, so we've got some time while all that organized chaos continues."

"I don't see the problem there," Rory interrupted.

"I do," Apostolos muttered. "I'm assuming that the word is spreading like wildfire?"

"That would be putting it lightly."

Rory wasn't fond of being left in the dark, his frown beginning to turn into a scowl.

"Anyone wanna share?"

"You," Apostolos said. "Or rather, the 'you' that they all like to think of you as."

"What do you mean by that?" Rory asked, feeling very confused.

"Rory doesn't exist pretty much at all anymore," Violet said, deciding to rip the band-aid off. "Less than fifty people ever actually met you, and even then, most of them barely interacted with you. The original seven, obviously, but only six of us remain. Then, from Viviann's generation, it's down to the twins who never spent as much time around you as Kal or Viviann themselves. After that, you were more like a specter even to the original fifty. Meaning that people didn't recount memories about Rory, they told stories about the Founder. The least flattering stories are that you were merely a vessel of E.O.N. or Aelia, with the most flattering being that you were a second-ring divinity alongside the seven other founders, just below E.O.N."

"First off, Eon isn't divinity, it's… well, it's hard to explain. Second off, Aelia definitely isn't a damn goddess." Rory muttered to himself, shaking his head. "I understand that ego of hers now."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing," Rory waved it off. "And third, I'm not a god. Fuck, I know Zoey is anything but a god. In fact, she's closer TO a butt than a god."

"Have fun trying to explain that to your church," Apostolos snorted before he suddenly looked at Rory quizzically. "Wait, Zoey?"

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Oh, yeah, forgot about that," Rory said before flicking over an interface, the notification of his partnership with Zoey.

While Rory had meant the message only for Apostolos, it was Violet who surprised him.

"Uhh, did you mean to do that?" She asked, eyes widening.

"Do what?" Rory questioned.

"This," She said as suddenly her own interface became visible to him.

"Oh, bullocks," Rory grumbled as he read it in an instant.

"See, this is what I mean," Rory groaned as he glared daggers into the ceiling. "Eon's not a divinity, but it does have a twisted sense of humor."

"The idea that E.O.N. has any sense of humor is hard to fathom," Violet said, not entirely on board with Rory's rantings.

"Yeah, well, try being me and you'd understand." Rory sighed. He had an inkling that while Eon came across as some impartial, omnipotent arbiter to most, for him or perhaps the other founders as well, that wasn't quite the case.

"I'm getting an update," Apostolos said, his eyes scanning an invisible interface. "Yeah, this wasn't just a you thing, Violet. Apparently, this was a citywide pop-up."

"Yeah, that won't help with the problem," Violet said. "Rory, I'm guessing that by updating Apostolos here, who is technically the closest thing we have to a recognized figurehead, it was shared as an official decree. And given the rather grandiose nature of the notification."

"Great, I'm elevated to demi-god status. Fucking wonderful," Rory groaned.

"We will handle that in due time," Apostolos said, waving his hands as if placating Rory. "Anyway, more importantly. The Vanguard is one of the eight. When did you meet them?"

"Zoey? I met her where I landed." Rory said. "Not right away, mind you, but during her own travels she got stranded there."

"And?"

"Well, at first we sort of clashed."

"Of course," Apostolos shook his head. "And then?"

"No, wait, more importantly, who won?" Violet interrupted.

"Officially, we have tied a record. I won the first fight even if I was the one to run away."

"Why'd you run away?"

"Does Rory really come across as the type who cares about finishing a fight if he can simply leave if he doesn't see a reason to stay?" Apostolos said, answering Violet's question with a question of his own.

"Bingo," Rory said before continuing. "Anyway, next fight went to her, as I decided to do something stupid and she had to save my ass."

"Got it. So… whose stronger now?" Violet asked.

"Is that really the most important question?" Apostolos rolled his eyes as he looked at his wife.

"No… maybe?" Violet offered weakly.

"It's fine," Rory waved off Apostolos's comment. "Truthfully, I'd bet on me, but that was also before her most recent trick she showed off in our most recent fight."

"You guys were fighting?" Apostolos asked.

"Oh, no, I mean when we fought this tier eight."

"Tier eight!?" Violet all but shouted.

"Is that so surprising?" Apostolos asked, sounding as if that was totally in line with expectations after seeing what Rory had done upon arriving.

"I mean… yeah? Punching up even within your tier isn't exactly easy. I understand you're level, what, seventy-eight, seventy-nine?"

"Seventy-nine," Rory confirmed.

"But that's not just punching up, that's punching out of tier. And last I remember, you weren't even a combat vocation."

"It wasn't easy," Rory said, not bothering to mention how the Queen had been an Alpha Variant upon first contact, only weakened thanks to the use of the oblivion chain. "But we're digressing, aren't we? If the question is who is stronger between me and Zoey, well, if I'm not allowed to use everything I've got, then Zoey, with her newest trick, would probably beat me, ehh, sixty-five percent of the time? If I can use everything I've got, then I'd probably flip those odds in the other direction."

Violet whistled, seeming impressed. "She's pretty powerful then. I'm glad you teamed up then, because E.O.N. knows if she had visited Ehkorrus as an enemy, she would have crushed us like a kid kicking over an insect nest."

In response, Apostolos frowned at Violet, crossing his arms.

"What? I'm just being honest. It's not as if you haven't shared some of those concerns with me over the years; all this does is confirm them. The founders were chosen as the founders because they were freaks in their own ways."

"You know I'm sitting right here," Rory waved at the woman, who rolled her eyes.

"Apostolos can chime in here, but since you left, nobody has shown that same ability to just… fixate as you have. Apostolos here tries his best, but even he takes time to recharge. Obviously, it's been decades, so maybe you've changed, but I remember how you could focus on a single project for months straight, only stopping to sleep every few days."

Rory wanted to counter, but nothing she had said was incorrect.

"Right, enough," Apostolos said. "As much as I'd love to continue this conversation, I can only delay making my appearance for so long. I need to get back out there and help direct things, as I'm sure Violet probably needs to as well."

"I mostly just wanted to drop in and see how things were going, given what you told me earlier," Violet admitted.

"Right, so, we've got things to do. You can hang out here if you want to," Apostolos said, looking at Rory. "You'd be noticed standing out almost instantly if you went out looking like you are and with that aura of yours."

"I can reign the aura in," Rory said, willing it in as Apostolos's eye twitched for a moment in surprise.

"You've gotten good at that. Pretty much all of our tier sevens need some aura suppressor to lower the level they exert to safe levels for the lower tiers."

"Well, you need precise aura control for some of the stuff I've worked on," Rory said, a montage of things exploding in his face replaying through his mind. "I can ditch my gear back at my own. After that, I got a few tricks for remaining unseen."

"If you say so," Apostolos said with a shrug. "I've got a feeling I'm going to hear about whispers of the 'specter of the Founder' or something along those lines shortly, but that cat is already out of the bag that you're back."

"Glad you see it my way," Rory said with a grin, standing up and brushing himself off as Apostolos shook his head.

"Goodbye, our uncomplicated life,"

Rory was impressed and bemused all at the same time.

Ehkorrus had absolutely exploded in size. That wasn't too shocking, its population was over a hundred times what he'd known it last, but what was startling was that for as much as it had grown, it hadn't really 'changed.'

That wasn't entirely correct; the very nature of the environment had changed dramatically, but the city itself had remained mainly at the same level. On Earth, a sixty-year gap was the difference between the archaic pre-digital era of the 80s and 90s, when technology consisted of oversized home phones, and the likes that he'd seen in a few museums, and his time period of the 2030s, where everything was digital. Or the difference between human flight and space travel itself had been less than sixty years.

Yet Ehkorrus hadn't undergone that same sort of step forward. Oh sure, there were innovations and changes here and there, things that were interesting from a novel perspective for Rory, but otherwise it was essentially the same in that regard.

I wonder if it's the lack of higher-tier crafters.

It was one theory Rory considered, but he was reminded of his conversation with Apostolos about Viviann's fate, and specifically, the inability to craft new runes.

Why, though? I can understand trying to create an Evolved Rune would probably be foolish at a lower tier without my version of the Inscription skill that gives me a potential bailout, but generic runes shouldn't be that hard to make. Like, eighty percent of them were stuff I just put together off the top of my head before formalizing them.

Shaking his head, Rory had explored the city that felt familiar, had entirely foreign all at the same time, before making his way to the one place that had been untouched.

His home.

"God damn you've gotten tall," Rory said as he pressed his hand to the bark of the tree that was his home. By now, the Star Blood Sequoia would have made the tallest trees of Earth look small, like a child measuring up to only the shoulder of an adult.

The entrance to his home was protected by a well-established runic defense array, and just by skimming over the runes, Rory got a sense that an intruder would find themselves affixed to the spot, as the very essence of their being was sapped into the tree itself.

"Nasty," Rory muttered, shaking his head with amusement. Then, without a pause, he stepped through; the runic array let him pass, as the one obvious exception within its function was that it seemed to be built to recognize Rory himself.

Entering his home, the first floor surprised Rory, a barren room save for a spiral staircase that led upward. Shrugging, Rory climbed up, several more empty rooms before at last, on the very top floor, nearly a third of the way up the tree, he found the room he recognized, almost precisely as he'd left it.

"Honey, I'm home," Rory snorted, before flopping onto the bedding. Technically, he had meant to return here before touring the city, but he decided against it as being too much work. In the end, he didn't really care if some random citizen who was in the process of settling back down spotted him; the announcement had already gone out, after all.

Home at last.

It was odd, on one hand, Rory was happy to have returned. On the other hand, it was far less special than he expected.

Ehh, it is what it is.

Having returned, there were already ideas beginning to burgeon in his head, but Rory promptly shoved them aside as he yawned. He didn't need the sleep, nor was he even that tired, but lying on the old mattress, Rory felt sleep call to him all the same.

You know what, I had my big damn hero moment. I think I earned a nap.

Yawning once more, Rory closed his eyes.

Work can wait until tomorrow.