The Chimera Summoner – Ch 44 (Part 2/2) – Emily
Ch 44 (part 2) -
The primordials regarded me.
Emily had a distinctly caught out expression on her face.
“Who is Emily?” Asked the Voice, dangerously.
I stared at the offending girl in the huge Bayloft sweater.
“Come ON, Eir?!” Emily gasped. “Snitches get stitches, what the FUCK?! I gave you the blessing you wanted, RIGHT?!”
“EMILY, ARE YOU CHAOS?!” I exploded.
“AND HAVE NEVER BEEN AN EMILY!! WHAT’S AN EMILY?!” Chaos screeched back, stamping her foot in the water.
“Interfering directly in the worlds is–” started the Voice.
“Death said her Herald was hotter than mine, and I can't let slander like that go unanswered! That's an outrage!” Chaos interrupted hotly.
“Bad news, babe.” I muttered.
“She NOT hotter than you, shut up NERD!” Chaos shot at me angrily.
“She kinda is though.” I shrugged apologetically.
“Before you changed, certainly.” Death made solemn seesaw gesture with her hands. “It's close now.”
“The important matters–” the Voice pleaded.
“My cock makes me hotter than HERA?!” I asked incredulously.
Death shook her head. “Of course not. All genitals are equally vile.”
“Then what change…?” I asked, deciding not to contradict a primordial. Even if she was fantastically wrong.
“When you soulbound the sword, honey.” Chaos said smugly.
“What changed about me then?!” I demanded.
“It doesn't matter, you're dead.” Death said,
“It matters, we’re sending her back!” Chaos insisted, outraged.
“What happened to my body?!” I begged.
The Voice lifted their gaze to the slowly wheeling stars and titanic branches and lifted their hands in a helplessly resigned gesture that I had often made myself during one disastrous summer I had tried to help in the mines back home. The gesture of a person working a shift that could no longer go any worse.
“You’re going to love it.” Chaos gushed. “You're DEFINITELY the hottest one, now.”
“It's… pretty good.” Death grumbled begrudgingly.
A golden figure appeared in the center of our conversation.
Rude.
“I have come to offer a bargain.” the golden figure proclaimed, rotating grandly to address each of us.
“Eir, meet Eternity, a traitor and an enemy.” Chaos said. Though her appearance was unchanged, the preppy student was gone. In her place, a monarch.
“A visionary and ambassador.” Eternity corrected, she tipped me a little bow. “Hello, young Eir.”
I scowled. This was the asshole who’d taken Wally from me.
Indirectly. But it was her people. And her people again who had taken my own life. Traitor and enemy sounded about right to me.
I should've been afraid, standing in such exalted company… but something about being dead made me feel bizarrely invincible. What could they do to me now?
“I have come to offer you a second chance, Eir.” Eternity said.
Her voice rumbled. Ancient. Immortal. Vast.
It felt… pretentious.
Like someone making their voice bigger or deeper to impress or intimidate.
Chaos made to step between us.
The Voice raised a hand. “You may not prevent a parley to a mortal, O Chaos.”
Chaos gave me a worried look, but settled back.
Eternity smiled. Sweet. Beautiful.
Poisonous.
“You have been wronged.” She said,
I bit back a retort.
“By your patron.” Eternity continued.
Chaos made an outraged sound deep in her chest.
“She recruited you to a war without your consent, trapping you at your most vulnerable moment.” Eternity purred, sympathetically. “The Architect is equally to blame. You should have obviously been offered a healing Class to begin with. You were born for it.”
The Voice somehow radiated professional affront. I gave them a placating look. They'd been lovely at my awakening. The other primordial was obviously just offering provocation.
“What war?” I asked. “The whole Strangers situation I keep hearing about?”
Eternity’s smile deepened.
“I have come to offer you what should have been yours from the start.” She said, “a Healing Class.”
I narrowed my eyes. I recalled Carmine’s skin stitching back together with unhealthy threads.
“No thanks.” I scoffed. “I'm happy with my Class.”
Chaos made a smug ‘Haurrrumph!’ sound.
Eternity’s golden eyes twinkled. “You can keep your lovely Familiars. I will furnish you with a Golden Rebirth Class. You will be reborn, yourself! In a world far from the front lines. There you can live and grow in peace, in the role you were born for. If you choose to join the war later, you may do so on your own terms. Not a tricked conscription by a patron who did not even deign to speak to you directly until now.”
Chaos bristled. “We spoke plenty. I gave her her orientation tour!”
“You what?!” Asked the Voice.
Eternity ignored her and fixed her golden eyes on me. “I am offering you a chance at peace Eir. War is coming to your world. This is already done. But you, and those you love can be free of it. Don't you want Lucy to be safe and happy? Don’t Lorna and Serenity deserve rest, at last? Violette… will be fine regardless. I won't lie.”
Eternity gave me a relaxed, knowing chuckle.
And I almost joined her.
I was tempted.
If the world really was as doomed to a terrible war, like they all seemed to take for granted…
I thought about the dread, and despair I had felt from Lorna when she spoke of it. How she had begged. Begged. For just one more day without it in her life.
I could give her a lifetime.
And we wouldn't be abandoning it… just a tactical retreat. To grow strong. To learn what the fuck it was about, and make an informed decision whether to join and what side. Not just get swept up in it.
The thought of putting Lucy and Violette in the midst of some terrible conflict…. It was unconscionable.
Serenity had told me her greatest wish was to live a life in peace, one day.
Eternity was offering exactly that.
And I could be what I had wanted. A healer. A real healer, from the sound of it. Not the tacked on bonus of [paramore’s mending]. But a real support suite. Imagine what I could do for my Familiars with powers like that. What we could accomplish together.
A future of love, adventure, and prosperity was falling into place before my eyes.
A new world.
My old dream.
The loves of my life.
All given by the entity responsible for the death of Wally.
Sponsored by the entity whose followers hunted people like me and Hera, wielding the foulest powers imaginable, and leaving blood and restless dead in their wake.
An Entity whose followers were, at this very moment, poised to kill hundreds of Netherim, who were possibly the last of their entire people.
“I offer you what I seek to give to your entire world. Golden peace.” Eternity’s soft, reasonable voice was sour milk in my nose.
“What do you get out of it?” I asked.
Eternity gave me a look of such genuine surprise and innocence that for an instant, I felt like a petty, ungrateful asshole.
“You may not lie.” the Voice decreed sternly.
Eternity flinched then returned to smooth saccharinity.
“Your mere absence would tip a valuable scale for me.” She purred. “At no cost to yourself.”
“She knows I'm all in on you.” Chaos snarled. “So she wants you off the board.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“No more Heralds. I made a Vow of my own.” She grinned.
“A gamble.” Death rolled her eyes.
“A gambit.” Chaos corrected with relish.
“I’ll make your Class wiiiildly overpowered.” Eternity threw in, with a secretive tinge. “I’ve got no obligation to keep things balanced like Archy. You want compensation for our misunderstanding in your hometown. I understand. I'll take all the power I gave Max, and use it to juice up your Class. That's in addition to everything else. Final offer, Eir. I need an answer right now.”
In Eternity’s face, I saw not the beauty and the richness, but a greedy opportunist, feeding on the fear of an impending catastrophe.
A trickster selling false cures in a plague.
“Fuck you.” I said.
It just came out.
The atmosphere had been so casual until just then.
Eternity turned her shining eyes on me and my soul was obliterated.
My identity was utterly erased.
Like a candle blown out by a hurricane.
—
—
—
…..?
….?
………
~~~~~~
I hauled myself up from an undignified position facedown in the shallow sea.
Chaos, Death, and the Voice regarded me. Eternity was gone.
“How long…?” I gasped.
“It doesn't really work like that.” The Voice said.
I nodded. “‘Course.”
Chaos helped me to my feet. She brushed me off gently, with a slightly fussy air, though I found that I was perfectly dry and comfortable.
If slightly rattled from…. I shivered at the memory, and Chaos rubbed my back.
“She’s not allowed to do that, sweetie." Chaos said, an uncharacteristically serious expression on her sharp little face. She rubbed my back, rather vigoriously.
“Imagine – breaking the rules.” remarked the Voice, sardonically.
Chaos ignored them, smoothing her Bayloft sweater protectively.
“I put you back together the same way.” Death said. “For the most part.”
I didn't even have the energy to address that one.
Having just had the huge relief of still being connected to my girls after death, suddenly losing that was more than a little terrifying.
The chasm. The gulf. The abyss.
No word. No idea in my mind could swallow the dread vastness of the oblivion and silence into which I had been cast.
The memory would haunt me forever. I knew I would never be fully free of it.
I kept checking and rechecking that our bonds were once again intact. They were right there, resting peacefully, tethered to my soul like they'd always been there. Unaware of what had almost happened. What HAD happened.
Good.
Good.
I shuddered.
Good.
Let them never, ever know. At least not the details.
“Your… words… have garnered us a solution, in the form of recompense.” The Voice said,
“You may ask for a boon.” Death said,
“Coming…back to life?” I asked.
Death looked shifty.
“No?” I asked.
Chaos grinned.
“That has actually already been taken care of.” Death muttered.
“By what?!” I asked.
“My Herald has… made a credible threat. And we have entered into a second pact.” Death admitted. “But I warn you – this is your last life. Test me at your peril!”
I had never needed less motivation to take someone at their word, EVER.
I held up my hands. I squeaked, “No tests. I believe you. I'm sorry if Hera did something crazy. Is she ok?”
Death huffed, and crossed their shadowy arms. “She is as ok as she ever is.”
I nodded. Close enough. Maaaybe I should follow up on that with Hera, if we got that chance.
Death said ‘ok’. Hehe.
“So a boon?” I asked.
They nodded.
“A bigger dick.” Chaos suggested.
I scowled at her.
“A SECOND dick?!” She gasped.
“You took something from me, the day I got my Class.” I said, a smile spreading across my face.
Chaos looked like she might cry.
“But your big beautiful cock?!”
“You said a boon, not a trade.” I clarified.
Chaos' face flipped from despair to delight in the blink of an eye.
"You're a maniac." She said, gleefully.
“Ahhh, the divine form.” The Voice nodded as they got what I was getting at.
We all turned and stared.
The Voice didn't exactly blush.
But it was heavily implied.