Chương 63: 62-Ultimatum

Jenna studied the face of their enemy carefully. Ahura. He had a name now. Even worse, he had motives. Dawn was still too shocked at the revelation to act. Jenna decided to take charge.

"You told us no. Would you at least care to explain your reasons?"

"Of course," Ahura said, almost civilly.

"That is the least I can do. Do you know what an Aeon is?"

"A measure of time. One billion years."

"It is much more than that. It is a planetary cycle. When an Aeon ends, the planet is remade. Its entire surface is scoured, and a completely new planet, with different flora and fauna, is born. Only the firmament remains."

"I have a feeling this is not a natural process."

"You are right about that. The Icosahedron induces it. Do you want to know why? Limbo is picky. Only one Immortal per reality per Aeon. This way of doing things allows us to reuse the same realities to feed Limbo." Necessity stood up and wandered around his office. He picked up a small globe on his desk—a representation of a planet, probably his own. He kept talking.

"Remaking a planet is not free, and one billion years is not a random figure. It is the minimum amount of time required for dimensional energies to recover after being used for a remake. We could remake them sooner, but there is a chance the planet would be destroyed in the process. The shorter the interval between remakes, the greater the chance for destruction."

"I fail to see what this has to do with us," Jenna said coldly.

"Just bear with me for a moment, please," answered Necessity.

"It will all be made clear. You have reset the Icosahedron. We can rebuild the Compendium, but it will take an eternity."

"Have you ever wondered about the quotas we set for Immortals during each cycle?"

"They are just an excuse to Exile them and feed Limbo," Jenna answered.

"Partly true—they also make the whole system more efficient. After each new cycle, Immortals become more desirable to Limbo. More wholesome, more fulfilling, more nourishing. A current Immortal is the equivalent of one hundred of the original Immortals, when it comes to sating Limbo's hunger."

"But that makes no sense…" Jenna said.

"You feed Limbo an Immortal every two years. You always have. If what you are saying is true, you would only need to feed it every two centuries. Unless…" Jenna's eyes widened in horror.

"You have already guessed it," Necessity said coldly.

"Limbo's hunger has grown as we have fed it. We are barely keeping up with it."

"And now, we must rebuild the system. It will be crude and inefficient at first, just like when Dawn first created it, and it will take us an eternity to refine it. We will be left with a system that produces defective Immortals that hardly sate Limbo's hunger. It is like trying to feed a grown man with a baby bottle. And what do you do in such a situation? You keep feeding that grown man bottle after bottle."

"We now have to activate the System on one hundred worlds at the same time, just to create enough Immortals. That means the time between remakes will also be shortened to ten million years instead of a billion—many worlds will not survive it."

"So congratulations on the fruits of your work: one hundred genocides instead of only one, and half the universe destroyed, just to return to where we were before. And I did not make that figure up—that is how many realities will be destroyed before we can make the new System work."

"Don't you dare put this on us!" Jenna exclaimed.

"It is you who insist on doing things the way you have always done them, even while the whole world is changing around you and your System has stopped working. You have just admitted it was failing. You could not keep up with Limbo!"

"I do not have the luxury of sharing your parochial views. You only see one universe. You have the luxury of ignoring all others. You can sabotage the work that keeps the multiverse alive while taking the high moral road. And yes, I commit genocide. I wipe out whole cultures—it is a small price to pay for the good I do. I am sorry for you if you are not capable of grasping it." Jenna fell silent for an instant. She closed her eyes. Images came unbidden to her mind. Lana, wailing in despair.

She had to choose a son to sacrifice to keep the other four alive. Mary Beth, crying for her mother. The Answer had allowed her to surface for one second. Governance jumping into Limbo—any sacrifice would be worth it to keep his people alive. She looked Necessity straight in the eyes. It was like looking in a mirror.

"No, Ahura. It is I who am sorry for you." Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"Enough," Necessity answered.

"This is not a debate." He remained silent for a moment, as if weighing what he was about to say.

"We have a problem here—you are facing all this as if you were the heroes in one of the Codas of that silly Chant. You defy. I answer. You win. The story is over. Everyone goes home to celebrate. That is not the kind of game we are playing. I will never stop. You may defeat me, but each time you do, I will double my efforts."

"Did you enjoy the Federation? That feeble attempt to weaponize other humans against you? I did. I enjoyed it so much that I have taken the idea to its ultimate expression." The rift changed; it became a window to other places. A window showing armies.

"I have contacted several militaristic factions around the world. Each different. Each has its own theme. All hostile and dangerous." The window showed an army made of insectoid creatures herded by humans in armor.

"That is the Seoul Desolation. Enterprising chaps. They have learned to tame not only dungeons, but also the Essentials they create. Their armies number in the thousands." An army of vampires and ghouls huddled inside a cave, behind rusted machines of war.

"The High Vampire army. I had forgotten about that Legacy; I had not seen it in ages. They have a way of turning slain enemies into fresh troops." A host of warriors in shining armor, mounted on war chariots.

"Ahura, please, don't do this," Dawn begged. Necessity ignored her. He kept on talking as if she were not present.

"The Free Children. Ironic name for a band of slavers. They have turned mind control into an art." A huge metal citadel flying over the ruins of a city.

"The Citadel of Sages. Even I don't know how they put that monstrosity in the air." The window cycled rapidly through new armies.

"I am not boring you, am I? There are twelve of them. I have promised Immortality to whoever gives me the Icosahedron. Each of them has a champion with a specific Class: Gate Master. They are waiting for the quest that will open the gates near Babylon. A quest granted by me."

"I will open one gate in each of the cardinal directions simultaneously. Four armies will besiege you at once—and for every faction you defeat, I will open a new gate to summon a fresh contender. I am going to drown you in enemies."

"You did not like the Answer? You thought I was being too harsh? There are four more Essence Engineers in the world now, each one also waiting for the quest that will allow them to create a new dungeon. I have based each one on tags Billy has created."" Reproductive: That is a good one. You like creating problems, don't you? Problems that reproduce. You are not going to be so fond of reproduction when these dungeons start appearing. They infiltrate your society with Essentials through the wombs of your females.

They look like perfectly normal children, undetectable by magical means. At some point in their lives, they mutate into monsters. You will never know whether any given child is human or a monster in disguise."

"You are enjoying this, aren't you, bastard?" asked Billy. He was seething. Necessity ignored him as much as he had ignored Dawn." Symbiotic: Essentials spawned by my version of the Symbiotic dungeon gain Essence by torturing people. Torturing them for eternity. That stunt you pulled on Garan seems merciful compared to what my new Essentials do."" Spatial: My new dungeons open gates into other parts of the universe. Dark places. Those gates can't be closed.

The things pouring out of them are much creepier than any horror you have faced so far—and that includes the Answer."

"You may have noticed that I mentioned four new types. I am keeping the last one as a surprise. Suffice it to say that it is worse than the other three combined."

"And that is all I have to say to you. Give me the artifact, or I will make your world a living hell."

"You have twenty-four hours." The rift disappeared. No one spoke for a long time.

"That went well," Jenna finally said. Dignity took out the Icosahedron and placed it on the table.

"Everybody, gather around; I want to make sure that bastard can't hear anything we say through Logsight," she said.

"I will join you as well, if you don't mind. Discretion is important to me as well," a new voice said. They all looked at the newcomer. He was nearly ten feet tall, burly and bestial. A single horn jutted out of his forehead. His voice, in contrast, sounded cultivated and mature.

"Who are you and how the hell did you walk in here?" asked Jenna.

"He did not walk in, Jenna—he was not there a second ago," said Dignity.

"I recognize him from the Coven; he is one of them. You are Exchange, aren't you?"

"That I am. I come with an offer for you—on behalf of my patron, not Necessity."

"Who do you work for?"

"That will be revealed when the time is right. Suffice it to say that your goals are more closely aligned with ours than with Necessity's."

"There is a third party involved," said Jenna.

"I always suspected it. You are the ones who caused Federation tech to fail and the Immortal hit squad to be Exiled, aren't you?"

"We also caused the Answer's gates to fail," Exchange answered.

"Why are you helping us?"

"We are not helping you. We are helping ourselves. We are not friends. We are not allies. As I said, Necessity's objectives do not match ours. That is the only reason we have intervened."

"We are going to need something more than that to trust you."

"You do not need to trust me. You only need to be desperate enough to accept any help. And you are." Jenna grunted, conceding the point.

"What can you offer us?"

"A way to get rid of the Icosahedron. Forever. One that will work."

"And here we go," sighed Bob, "down the rabbit hole once again." That one was actually not too bad, Charlie Vaughn said approvingly.