Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 55: Divinity

“Well, that wasn’t a very polite thing to say, now was it?” a voice asked from behind Isaac in nordically accented German, causing him to whirl around in shock. There hadn’t even been the slightest hint of the stranger’s presence, no shift in the air as he moved, not even the tiniest sound made as he appeared and not the slightest amount of mana had been used to enter this bubble of altered time.

Going unnoticed by him in the chaotic environment that was planet Earth was quite possible, if unlikely given that he had a Perception/Agility build and was fairly high Level. But even someone with a Level nearing one hundred or even having surpassed it would have likely left some kind of noticeable trace, even if he could only have spotted it in hindsight.

Completely and utterly traceless was incredibly hard to achieve, but there was one group that had it as a matter of course. The gods. Then again, that should have been obvious from the get go, given how the world had shifted after he’d started screaming insults at the sky.

Standing on the roof maybe three meters away from him was a man. His overall body shape was normal, even if he stood at least two meters tall. Long blond hair flowed down his neck, ending the small of his back. His skin was fair, almost pale enough to qualify as unhealthy without quite crossing that boundary. He was wearing a suit in a surprisingly subtle purple color, as well as green pants which might have looked good … if they’d been paired with something other than the purple suit.

But all of those observations were rather mundane, given the man’s most obvious feature. His eyes. They were green, or at least, that they were by the normal naming conventions of using the iris’ color to describe the entire thing, which didn’t do them justice as the rest of the eyeball was a deep crimson faintly streaked with white, as if he’d had the world’s worst night and burst every blood vessel within, resulting in incredibly bloodshot eyes. Surrounding these already disturbing features lay burned and blistered skin, as if he’d been using battery acid for eyedrops.

And Isaac had no idea who this was beyond ‘a god, any god’. No description of any being even remotely fitting this guy had ever become public, so if he’d ever made an appearance, Isaac had never heard of it.

He relaxed his stance, standing up straighter while letting his arms drop to his side while Old Reliable shifted into its knife form and warped into its sheath on his belt. At least it was unlikely he’d be obliterated by divine power, given that doing so would give the other side a chance to take a ‘free’ action. And when one considered that doing that after already giving them a chance to retaliate for the [System] alteration, that would likely be a very painful retaliation. So, this guy was unlikely to have come here to kill him, even if there was a good chance he had less extreme measures to make him suffer available.

“Hm, pity. Normally people freak out a lot more when I show up. My oh my, whatever must have happened in that other timeline?” the man tsked, sitting down. For a brief moment, it looked like he was about to lose his balance and end up on his ass, but then a comfy armchair manifested under him and he sat down.

“I can tell you that.” Isaac said “But I do have one question: whose side are you on?”

“Neutral.” the man shrugged, manifesting a dainty little teacup and saucer, then taking a sip, completely nonchalant.

“Wha- …” Isaac slammed his mouth shut with enough force to make his teeth hurt as they slammed together. No demanding answers of deities, dumbass!

“And there. It. Is!” the man burst out laughing “It’s not a good idea to keep in all your emotions, you know.”

“I prefer to not wear my heart on my sleeve and that’s not exactly an easy habit to get rid of.” Isaac stated matter of factly, wracking his brain to try and remember who this guy might be.

“But that’s boooring.” the man sighed “I suppose I could tell you about how being neutral works while you think about how to be a better person.

“See, there are people who are assholes. Some of them are humans, some are gods, some are … other. Point is, they’re assholes, jackasses, jerkwads, douchebags, what have you. Those with divine power are limited by the normal constraints of that type of power brings, namely that anything they do gives the goody two shoes a chance to counter it.

The others, the boundless optimists, the idiotic idealists, the sunny morons who never manage to see the darkness in others before it bites them in the ass … you know the type, don’t you? The same applies to them. They want to help, to fix all the problems for everyone, no matter how useless it makes the recipient because they never had to struggle for anything and all that. But they can’t, because then the assholes would heap on just as much crap as got shoveled off by the bright and sunny nitwits.

And then, you have the neutral ones. The ones who do random shit, some good, some bad, depending on a whim or perspective, all of that.

Nature makes cute and cuddly animals … and then has then has them commit patricide, fratricide, filicide, what have you. Did you know that duck genetalia have evolved to alternatively aid and prevent insemination via rape?

Mischief is, well, mischief. Do random shit to whoever someone wants to do something to. Sometimes it’s a douche who gets hit and it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s a good person and it’s a bad thing. It all evens out in the end.

Also there’s things like love, revenge, war, stuff like that. Context matters.”

“War?” Isaac frowned. The other’s he could sort of see, but war?

“War to create an empire of purity for an antisemitic jackass failed painter from Austria, war to save the confident from said jackass.” was the immediate, dry response.

“And what do you fall under, then?” Isaac asked.

“Mischief. My name is Loki, by the way.”

Isaac froze as he nearly facepalmed. Blistered, bloodshot eyes? According to mythology, Loki had been sentenced to have the venom of a serpent drip into his eyes for the rest of eternity for his role in the death of Baldur. In hindsight, it was obvious.

This was incredibly dangerous. The fact that there was a god here at all was a problem, but someone as tricky as Loki? This could go incredibly dangerous.

“Nice to meet you, Loki. I’m Isaac, but I’m sure you already knew that.” Isaac introduced himself as well.

“Of course I did.” Loki winked at him.

“Would it be possible to hurry this along? The world could easily be tearing itself apart out there and I want to help.” Isaac said imploringly, hoping to get out of here as soon as possible.

“Nervous, are we?” Loki chuckled “I’m promising you, right here and now, that I won’t hurt you, I won’t cripple you, I won’t do anything to harm you or that is contrary to your interest save perhaps the fact that you’d prefer I didn’t scare the hell out of or tease you. Also, we’re currently in a bubble of slowed time, so the world isn’tcurrently burning out there. You will not walk away from this conversation the poorer for it, m’kay?”

‘pat, pat, pat’

Suddenly, the god had shifted positions and had his right hand reaching out and was patting Isaac’s head as if he were a small child. That was certainly reassuring, even if Isaac was very unhappy with the from those reassurances had taken. In the myths, which were really all he had to go on, Loki kept his promises, but was so incredibly good and adhering to only their letter that they were pretty much meaningless.

“Then can I ask why you’re here? Just so you can mess with me a little?”

“And where’s the fun in giving out all the answers directly, hm?” Loki raised and eyebrow, then relaxed “But the truth is pretty simple, I’m messing with the others, all of them.”

“Isn’t sticking me directly into the crosshairs of the divine a little dangerous, making it, well, harmful?” Isaac grimaced, images of spears forged from holy light hammering down from the heavens and reducing him to ash.

“No one would dare.” Loki chuckled “It would be way too much work.”

“Work? I’m human.” Isaac frowned.

“No. You’re champion. You’re the only person from another timeline, the only one who knows what actually happened then. The stupidly idealistic halo-toters certainly don’t, adding the functionality of sending back their own memories with the traveller would have blown the budget, so to speak. You’ve clearly had some experience with how divine politics work, given that you knew to ask the right questions.

“How big of a karmic imbalance a certain action creates can shift around based on how likely it is to happen. Take you for example, ensuring the last surviving human would get another crack at saving everyone would create a titanic imbalance. Setting up an obscure trigger, on the other hand? That’s comparatively cheap.

“You’re the last survivor of a dead timeline, knowing things not even the god do. Even if you’d sat down and never lifted a finger to help anyone after your return, you still held the possibility of saving the world. You certainly had a better chance than all the others, given that your very existence proves that they failed. Taking any kind of action to help or hinder the person who is in a position to save the world is hella expensive. I could have killed you here and now if I hadn’t promised to.”

Isaac froze as he heard that, tensing up even though he knew he was helpless in this situation … and then Loki started speaking again, ten seconds later.

“But if kill the man who would have saved the world, that means now I basically have to save it myself. That’s why no neutral god will dare help or hurt you and as for the others, they wouldn’t touch you with a ten lightyear pole. Anything they do to you has a chance of reaping big results, to the others have basically free reign to make an equally big play. So, don’t expect any divine favors now, you hear me?”

“Isn’t that what this is?”

Loki laughed in his face “You already knew all this, you were just too much of an idiot to put it all together.”

“Speaking of big plays though, I don’t suppose you could give me some information on what is going on right now. The event, I mean.”

“Ah, that would be telling. You’ll find out soon enough.” Loki shook his head “Anyway, I’m off to balance out my own standing after this conversation. If I’m looking too nice, I’ll get some kid to drop his ice cream cone or something. If I look too bad, I’ll make sure it ends up on some jerk businessman’s expensive Italian leathers.”

Isaac gave him a flat look.

“Oh, come on, that was a metaphor. I’d never mess with a little kid.” Loki sighed “All they do is cry, that isn’t fun. But you offered to tell me about the other timeline, didn’t you? Come on, let’s hear it, I want something I can hang over Hermes’ head.”

Isaac sighed and told the sad tale of a dead world, suppressing the urge to glare at the god all the while.

“There’s just one more thing I’d like to know: where were the gods all this time? If you can tell me, I mean.” he asked, hoping to get and answer, because that had been seriously weighing on his mind. Why had there been not a single divine miracle caught on camera, at all, in all the times when the technology had been available? Oral and written accounts were all well and good, but also a hell of a lot easier to fake.

Loki got to his feet, straightened a tie that suddenly appeared from nowhere, and intoned a very rehearsed sounding sentence.

“We’re the gods from your myths, but that doesn’t make us your gods.”

The deity grinned down at Isaac.

“Try and have a little fun with this event, I promise it won’t kill you. Well, the fun part won’t, anyway. Helios’ damn horses though … those are some ornery sons of bitches.”

And with that cryptic warning, the god grew until their relative heights were less ‘average person stands in front of tall person’ and more ‘adult stands in front of child’. Isaac knew what was about to happen.

‘pat, pat, pat’

Then, the god vanished, taking the purple tint and the bubble of slowed time with him.

“Well, that happened.” Isaac muttered, phased through the roof to fall to the ground and ran to retrieve his cellphone. Then, he called Bailey. Sleeping people weren’t woken by [System] notifications, so if the professor was still doing the stay up late and get up early, semi-normal sleep cycle he said he did, as opposed to Isaac’s schedule of random catnaps, he’d be in bed right now. Given his Fortitude, he’d likely wake in a matter of a couple of hours, but a lot could go wrong in that timeframe.

Therefore, it was time to get the guy with starpower out of bed while finding out as much as he could about the pitfalls of the [Event], then warning people about them before it got out of hand. The only other choice was playing damage control right here, protecting a single city while the rest of the world burned. It might feel good, but it wouldn’t even qualify as a single drop in the bucket, so insignificant was it on a global scale.

“What’s wrong?” Bailey’s tired voice came from the phone as he picked up after the second ring.

“Check your [System] notifications, I’ll call the others. I’ll be in the lab in maybe half an hour.” Isaac replied and hung up, then made the same calls to all the others, waking them all up and sending them to the lab.

While he’d been busy doing that, Bailey had sent him a short text.

‘be there in thirty, getting help’

Not informative in the least, but pretty promising.

Isaac then took a running start and leaped.

His new [Skill], [Poltergeist’s Flight], nullified the effects of gravity, letting him reach a height of fifty meters with ease. He briefly deactivated it to nullify his upwards momentum, and then he was flying parallel to the ground at a decent clip, but not an outstanding one. This was where his next trick came in.

He twisted until he was facing backwards, drew Old Reliable in its largest, heaviest configuration of a Venomsteel Kriegsmesser and threw it backwards.

As per the very basic principle of ‘every action causes an equal and opposite reaction’, the same force that flung the blade away from him pushed him faster along his route, then he teleported the blade back to his side in its smaller configuration before it could hit the ground. It matched his vector and speed perfectly, nay, magically, not affecting his movement in the slightest.

Then, he drew the blade and shifted it again, then hurled it, again. And again. Every throw made his flight less and less steady, but he also grew better and better at using this technique.

The landing when he grew low on mana was still quite rough, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be the next time. And the time after that would be smooth as butter, or at least that was what he hoped. Regardless, it would have to wait, he had an [Event] to outsmart and a world to save.