They met up with Aclysia and Beatrice without issue. In the first place, they hadn’t been particularly deep into Death Zone territory, so the train ride was only a couple of stations. From there on out, they had moved around the town and tried their best to stay out of the mundane eye, while remaining in the real world.

That was actually quite a difficult task. This was the southern coast. The weather wasn’t comparable whatsoever to New York. This was Friday, the seventh of December, and the temperature outside was roughly 12 degrees. The weather report said that tomorrow could see it rise all the way to 20. In New York, this time of year, temperatures didn’t even reach the double digits.

All of this was important for the sole reason that people were actually running around, rather than cuddling with their radiator with a mug of hot cocoa. Combining this with the fact that the largest cities along the coast operated ‘only’ in the range of one to two hundred thousand people didn’t make this easier. There was a certain isolation about sharing a space with literal millions of people that wasn’t quite present at that density. People took more notice of each other. Not quite as much as they would have in a village, but enough that being isolated in public wasn’t quite a thing.

The sole reason why John was avoiding public attention was because, however the Death Zone exactly worked, it was a spell. Whatever that spell was, it had to operate with a minimum of subtlety. Otherwise, Gaia would have taken care of this Death Zone years ago. Sitting around in privacy could have worked, but John did not possess any property in the area. An oversight, looking back. He could have just paid some mundane dealership to acquire a couple of houses along the coast for him. As long as he paid, nobody would ask why he would just blindly acquire properties.

All of this would have been easier if they could have entered an Illusion Barrier to squat in. All of the evidence they had pointed towards abduction from reality though. They had no evidence that it didn’t also happen in Illusion Barriers, but with one option being confirmed and one being theoretical, taking the beaten path made more sense. They did still make a barrier at one point, but that was only to see if they could enter something. No success there either.

Now, after a day of moving around, they had rented themselves a stay in the largest hotel the city had to offer. Which, admittedly, was respectable enough under regular circumstances. Pensacola, the city they were in, likely attracted a moderate amount of tourism due to the weather alone.

Still, to John, staying in such a hotel was torture. With the elementals resting inside his soul, there were still seven people to share a room and the biggest one they could rent was for four. They did allow all of them to stay in one room together, which was one problem solved at least, but the beds were too small for more than three to fit in there. The question wasn’t who slept on the ground, three of the women in attendance didn’t even need sleep, but how they could sleep without suppressing their usual habits. The answer: they couldn’t. It was logistically impossible.

The end result was some very shallow sex, by their standards, and Rave getting banished to the one bed while the remaining humans shared the other and the Artificial Spirits spent the night standing. Rave was not enthused about being the odd one out. The response to this was a universal pointing out of her very odd mid-sleep movements. That banter at least eased them off enough that they managed to fall asleep in the first place. They were still deeply uncertain about what would happen that night. In their clothes and clutching crystals, they slept.

John opened his eyes.

Above him was a vast sky, stars stretching endlessly to either side. Where they should have met the horizon, they seemed to go on still. A perception made possible by the shallow, serene ocean the Gamer was lying in, reflecting the silver light from above. He slowly rose up and cupped some of the water with his hands. It was of an arcane purple colour.

“This dream again,” he hummed, wondering what exactly let him have it. This was the fourth time. He looked around, wondering if he would remain alone this time. “Undine?” he asked, the abysstide elemental had joined last time.

“It is only you,” a voice shook the dreamworld and caused John to look up to the sky. The stars above had coalesced, in a split second, into the shape of a massive eye in the sky. It was an embodiment of perfect symmetry, every outlining star a dot mirrored on the opposite side of the slit pupil. The eye had no colour, aside from the vast blackness of space between the clusters.

The entity, whatever it was, looked down at John, like a careless scientist would look at a particularly interesting laboratory rat. “I feel no other connection established this night. Chaos brings us together, so state your name and pass this time for me, you who gazes at my stars.”

“It’s not like there are a lot of other things to look at around here.” John’s flippant response was more instinct than anything. He had an immense distaste for the way he was addressed here. It didn’t help that another mystery that had popped up in his life occasionally now came to a sudden revolution while he was investigating the Death Zone. A coincidence? John doubted it.

“For one such as you, there isn’t,” the celestial eye responded, the voice, deep and cold, seemingly bored with him. “You are a visitor in my Sanctum – or what remains of its true form. Ah, but I tire already. Mad smiths, cackling alchemists, nihilistic failures, kings, tyrants, dictators, scientists, peasants, serfs, whoever of you marked I’m connected with, it’s always the same questions you ask of what remains of me. At least you’re one of the saner ones.”

“…What do you mean by that?” John was more than intrigued now. “Marked? Marked by the Lorylim? Who or what are you?!” He was getting agitated, rising to his feet. The purple water dripped off him without leaving any of him wet or any of his clothes soaked.

The eye in the sky closed, and a massive yawn shook the dream like an earthquake. “A mildly entertaining demonstration of deductive ability. Then let me return the value from what the waking me knows. I must guess that you are John Newman, also known as the Gamer. Am I not correct?” John didn’t answer immediately to the arrogant voice. Another yawn with an even greater shaking accompanying it. “If you are in such dire need of information, you best entertain me. This dream ends when my sleeping self, the one you are currently speaking to, falls asleep.”

“Yes, I am John Newman,” the Gamer responded. “Who is asking?”

“Gamer, according to that title, you would be willing to play a game, would you not?” The celestial eye ignored his question entirely. “Then let us engage in a little game of wits. Mocking those incapable to remain in control of their minds gets so direly repetitive, I relish the change of pace.”

John groaned, rubbing the bridge of his nose. ‘I seriously hate people like this,’ he thought, but said, “Fine, I oblige. State the rules of your game then.” It wasn’t as if he had another choice, aside from waking up and gaining nothing.

“The rules are simple: I present you with a question or riddle, and if you answer correctly, I will elaborate on all your mortal little mind will not have guessed on what surrounds the speck of truth you have discovered,” the disembodied voice told him. “You fail when you take too long and I wake. Understood?”

“Understood.” John nodded, wanting this to get on the road as quickly as possible. This would at least get him some complete answers, even if it were only for those things he could already guess. Certainty was nice in the current time. “Start then.”

“Let’s start with you answering your own question,” the celestial eye said. “This place is my Sanctum. I am the son of the water that fills the ocean and the water that fills the sky. I forge the stars to which you gaze and the metal that falls from the firmament. Who am I?”

“Enki.” John didn’t have to doubt it for a second. Ever since he knew that the god survived, courtesy of Momo’s intel from running into a Metracana during her travels, he knew that Enki was somewhere in North America. That he was tangled up with the Death Zone had always been a possibility. “You’re Enki, god of stars, the one that supposedly died during Babylon’s fall.”

“Oh? How pleasing to learn that you are actually educated.” The celestial body twisted into something that was both grin and eye. “Yes, I am the Starforger, the last surviving god of Mesopotamia, first child of Mother Chaos and Abzu. I erected the walls of Akkad. I shaped the mechanisms of the treasure ziggurats. I forged the bodies of the Metracanas and my mastery over the arcane gave them the spark of life. I am Enki. To be more exact, I am the sleeping Enki, the full consciousness that operates beyond my body.”

Several questions were on John’s lips. How did he survive? What was he doing in John’s dreams? Did they share a connection because of the Lorylim? Did that mean that Enki himself was, or had been, infected? Did he have a connection to the Death Zone? If yes, of what nature was it?

None of these he would get an answer for. The rules of the game were clear. John just had to hope the god of stars felt like talking about it.

“I have two bodies, yet I have none, yet I have all. I shape what I wish and I wish to shape nothing. Who am I?” the next question came in.

John pondered for a moment, then went with the answer that came to mind immediately. “Gaia.”

“Gaia, the tyrant of creation,” Enki growled, suddenly sounding angry. The eye in the sky opened wide and glanced around, maniacally searching for something John wasn’t even sure was there. “Shackling us all with a freedom we cannot truly enjoy. Her rules bind us. Her nature limits us. Can we rebel against her or does she control us all fully? If we can rebel, can we win? Is a victory the breaking of her great system of Ire or is a victory a rousing of the endless mind that makes us, ending our existence entirely? Or, perhaps, just like you and I will keep existing after I wake from this dream, we will exist outside of hers? Certain is only that, in this realm, we are bound. Chained to things she does not wish us to try and topple.”

There was nothing John had to add to that. Similar questions had bounced inside his head before. The defining difference between him and Enki was that this system worked for him. He could come to terms with Gaia’s dream because the only thing that bothered him about it was the possibility for it to end. Trying to change that was like revolting against death itself. As a powerful man, John could stave off death, but he could never end the fact of the universe that organic lifeforms came to an end. Yet, here was Enki, espousing his wonder for the consequences of ending reality in its current form.

“My first name was Sargon and I asked for people to grind their axes of bronze on the mountains,” the Starforger continued. “I carried many names behind me and many claimed me without right. I am long forgotten, yet I still seal power beyond the means of many. Few seek to find me. What am I?”

“…the king of Akkad,” John guessed after some pondering.

“The heir of what once was,” Enki sighed, back to his analytical, arrogant tone. “The great realm of Akkad, many other titles as it had, the first time you puny mortals put together something of relative value. The great wonders Sargon sealed for those that he would find to be worthy. The One of Nothing still wards it to this day. Enuma Elish, a weapon named after creation and end, I wished I could have ever seen it in action. It was my masterpiece.”

“Stop with your nostalgia and keep upholding your end of the bargain,” John demanded, annoyed enough that he had to keep taking the scraps he was fed.

“You are lucky you are entertaining enough,” Enki hummed and continued. “They cut me apart. I cut me apart. I tore at my flesh and the salty streams were unending. The more my husband lives, the more I die, the more I die, the stronger I become, the stronger I become, the more my husband dies. Man killed my husband and I wished to kill all of man. Who was I?”

“Tiamat.”

“You truly are well informed, John Newman, I am pleased, very pleased indeed,” Enki stated. “Mother Chaos, the one whose very flesh could spawn more gods. She birthed me. Humans asked for her flesh to craft themselves gods, like her creator once did, and were successful. The greatest of the crafted sons and daughters was Marduk, the god of understanding. Then, in their greed, they killed Abzu. Thus, Mother Chaos sought a way to destroy all humans. She tore the gods from her own flesh and used her influence to twist them into her servants. She even made herself a new husband. The gods the humans crafted succumbed the same way. Soon, Mother Chaos was the only revered goddess of Mesopotamia. Soon, all rules were twisted. Soon, the tower of Babylon stood. Gaia eradicated what Tiamat had made hers. I, who patrolled the edge of her realm, survived to carry on her legacy.”

‘Is that what it is?’ John wondered. ‘Is he what gives the Lorylim their link to Metra? The Lorylim predate Metra, but do they predate him and Tiamat?’ “You’re the only one of Tiamat’s god children to survive?”

“Hmmm, I’ll allow this question.” The celestial eye suddenly came a lot closer. How much closer that was, John couldn’t possibly gauge. Distance became impossible to tell in a dream realm like this, where there was nothing but water, sky and stars. The best measure he had was the distance to his own feet. “I am the sole survivor of those born from Tiamat. The Metracanas carry pieces of Mother Chaos inside her, but they are not truly of her flesh.”

‘Assuming he tells the truth, the Lorylim do not have their origin in Tiamat, since they’re still around,’ John thought. ‘Just what are they?’

“My final riddle,” Enki suddenly announced. “The shadows are forming under the morning sun. The bells of the morning will ring soon. This mind of mine will return to the Sanctum that is real but twisted out of necessity. Your mind will return to your body, marked by the first foe - Where do you think you are?”