PreCursive

  This was…

  Well, it was ughable. Was this really what this creature had brought me here for, into this repliy childhood neighborhood? To try and recruit me?

  I…really?

  I could feel my facial expression twist slightly as I tried to hold in a hysterical ugh at the thought, but the copy of Grey that stood before me didn’t react at all. I mao keep it down, all the while my c indulged in the disbelieving ughter I didn’t let escape me.

  What the hell was Rhazal thinking? What made it think that I en to such a thing? I liked to sider myself a fairly loyal person, all together. I didn’t take any kind of notion of treachery seriously at all. What did I even have to gain from switg sides and joining up with a goddamned Camity?

  So I asked him.

  “Why would I do that?” I asked Rhazal bluntly. “I like the life I’m building well enough here, so why would I jeopardize that to sign up with you?”

  Rhazal didn’t blink at my question. In fact, I had noticed that he wasn’t blinking at all, nor were there any elements of other autonomic bodily funs on his illusionary puppet. Like…breathing, for instance.

  “Because you are doomed if you do not,” He answered bluntly. “Not a one of you is before me is capable of matg my might, and soon I will finish subverting the Portal Stone. When I am done, my mistress will stride the soil of this world once more, and with her will e her armies. None upon this soon to be blighted world resist her. Kyron and Yun are long dead. The Humans and Dwarves are unshielded from her influence. All of Vereden shall be as mbs to the sughter before her.”

  I frowned slightly, noting those names. I had never heard them before, but I didn’t dwell on it. “How you be so sure we ’t fight back?” I said defiantly. “We aren’t as weak as you think we are. There are strong people here. In the face of annihition, we could band together and push you, and her, out.”

  A fsh of almost amusement swam through the imitation’s eyes before something ued happened.

  A mountainous pressure, prised of pure energy, pure Aether, fell upon my shoulders out of nowhere. The force of it was s, and so unassaible, that I was immediately driven to my knees from the power alone. I smmed into the false pavement of this manufactured world, struggling to remain upright using Tzo’s staff as an anchor. I failed, and slumped over onto my hands as well. I groaned, feeling what felt like aire o pressing down on me. I could feel my boraining uhe weight pressing down on me.

  I feel my soul strain, too. In this pce, I was more scious of the crystalliree at the core of my being, and I felt it creak and groan from the might.

  As if from a great distance, I heard Rhazal speak again. “No, you ot,” He said with finality. “Though I have slept in these years sihe end, I still dreamed. And in those dreams, I have seeate of this world. Vereden is weak and diminished in the wake of the Great War. You have nons. You have ies. Yreat Spirits are culled and weakened, from millennia of straining to hold the fabric of your world together. There is no defehat you muster before the might of my mistress.”

  The pressure bearing down upon me abruptly ceased, and I slumped down onto my front in its absence. I y there gasping for a moment before I found my strength and struggled to my feet, using my borrowed staff to help me to them. When I was standing once more, I found that Rhazal hadn’t moved even once during his little show of strength. He just kept on watg me with a bnk gaze.

  He spoke again before I could find my voice. “It is possible, if unlikely, that one of your champions could mao sy me in bat,” Rhazal admitted freely, seemingly ung about the possibility of his owh. “I am diminished from my long slumber and my absence from the side of my mistress. But that is irrelevant. Such a thing will not occur in time to prevent me from opening the way for her. Already, I feel the fairace of her grace as if from a great distance, groping against the barrier that separates us.”

  I felt a bolt of adrenaline roll down my spi his words. I wao sh out at him immediately, to try and do my best to stop the doom that he described. But I still didn’t knoas supposed to kill him, to my frustration. I could only hope it would bee evident to me, if I drew this out. “And what do you offer, Harrower?” I asked warily. “What could you possibly give me, to make me turn my ba all that I know?”

  Rhazal leaned forward on his imitation of Erux. “A seat…at my mistress's side,” He said, ay smile on his stolen lips. “You would not be the first Precursor to serve as the hand of god. Your kind have ever made excellent ons, when suborned from the yoke of the System. Do not look so surprised,” He said, at my obvious shock. “Your kind are mortals, after all. And mortals are subjeptation. My mistress offer you anything you desire. Nothing is beyond her reach. Power and riches beyond imagining could be bestowed upon you. panioeriowledge and skills, mighty Artefacts. Nothing is beyond the reach of She Who Devours. You need only agree to serve, and it could all be yours.”

  I frowned, still troubled by the thought that other men and women from Earth could have agreed to be the pything of divinity. Not only that, but how Rhazal had directly mentiohe System, when he was from an age before the Initialization. “How you make this offer?” I asked pointedly, pushing those thoughts away. “You haven’t spoken to yoddess in millennia.”

  Rhazal slowly shook Grey’s head. “I am empowered to speak for my mistress in these matters. She would not let opportunity escape her grasp.”

  I was silent for a moment, letting his offer roll over me. A thought occurred. “What if…” I said slowly, drawing out my words. “I wao go home?”

  Rhazal didn’t blink. “Eborate.”

  I gestured arouo the recreated neighborhood from my younger years. “You created this pce for a reason. You felt my attat to these streets, these homes oh. I had another life here, before I was taken to Vereden. If I asked it of her…could your mistress returo that world?”

  Rhazal examined me for a moment. “Of course she could,” He said eventually. “You need only agree to a period of servitude, and my mistress possesses the power to return you to the world of your birth. All you o do…is take my hand, and the pact will be sealed.” At that, the creature extended his false right hand in my dire, outstretched for me to take.

  Only…

  I had caught him in a lie.

  While I was never intending to sign up with the literal forces of evil, I had wao see what their pitch was.

  And it was all fake.

  There was no way back to Earth they could offer me. Not for me. Not for any Precursor.

  The only way back was through the death of all the gods.

  Maybe.

  If Rhazal was a way bae for me…

  Then nothing he promised was true.

  I pstered a fake, eager smile on my lips and approached the long-abandoned Camity. As I did so, I palmed something. Something I had long since had up my literal sleeve.

  Doing my best to give nothing away, I paused for a moment before I could set my hand against the false flesh of Rhazal’s. “One more question, before we finish this,” I said evenly.

  “Speak,” The monster said evenly.

  I moved in a fsh, activating everything that I possibly could in that moment.

  Thorn Cloak for the prote.

  Sylvan Vigor at max capacity, for the strength and speed.

  Grasping Roots, to hold the imitation in pce.

  And finally…

  The Stilnt Bde, on the small throwing dagger I had hidden up my sleeve.

  As crimson roots exploded from the asphalt to around Rhazals legs, I reached out. Instead of his hand, I grasped the forearm of the disgusting repliy mentor, and ya forward.

  Right onto my brilliantly burning dagger.

  It sank into the stomach of the shadow, meeting little resista the same time, I gouged the bde upwards, opening a massive, gaping hole into the surface of Rhazal’s puppet.

  I leaned forward, until my eyes met the impersonations of my mentors. My emerald, against the bd silver of its.

  “Do you feel pain?” I hissed to the monster responsible for the death of so, so many is.

  Rhazal simply met my eyes for a moment, before looking down at the dagger I had buried deep into its chest. The rent I had opened up on the fa?ade of its mouthpiece gaped open, revealing a mass of swirling, corrupted, bck Aetherial smoke instead of innards. It stepped back from me, letting my bde free from its chest with a sound akin to a cork popping from a bottle.

  A measure of disappoi ehe eyes of the thing that had tried to tempt me. “You have chosen…poorly, Precursor.” He finally said. Moments ter, the entire facsimile of Grey that Rhazal had jured before me…dispersed. It unraveled into a mass of bck smoke that dissipated into the false summer air of the Texan replica I stood in.

  In moments, it was as if it had never existed at all.

  Silence fell on the neighborhood for a moment, before Tzo broke it.

  “Well,” The Lich said thoughtfully. “I’ll say this. That was, at the very least, bold of you. Potentially moally foolish, of course. But bold heless.”

  I discarded the tiny throwing dagger I had used to gore the e of Grey off to the side, a frown crossing my lips as I looked around. I was ready for Rhazal's terattack at any moment. There was no way this was over. “You know as well as I do that this was only ever going to go one way,” I said out loud, no longer g about subterfuge. “It’s not like I was going to take his deal.”

  “I suppose,” Tzo said doubtfully. “But I must ask…did you sider it? The deal with the proverbial demon.”

  I kept silent at his question. I don’t think there was a for any world that could ever get me to aowledge that I…had. For one short moment, my c had sidered the idea of it. Serving at the feet of a goddess would have…simplified matters for me. I would have bee a direct servant to a woman who would have shortly ruled two ps, instead of being the measly apprentice of a schoolteacher in a war-torn, weakened try. I’m sure Ixiah would have been able to graold riches, and power, and whatever the hell I wanted.

  But it would have meant spitting ohing that everyone had done for me since I had arrived on Vereden.

  Azarus, for saving me from a life of svery by acceptio his home.

  Bleddyn, fhting at my side for freedom.

  Grey, for everything he had patiently taught me.

  Honoka, for the advid healing she had freely gifted me.

  Sylvia…

  I couldn’t do that to them.

  Which wasn’t even ting the millions of people on Vereden I would have been directly ning, by signing up with a literal evil goddess.

  I had chosen my path. And it didn’t y with Ixiah.

  Now I just had to find out what y on that path.

  Something caught my eye, as I was looking around. A curl of bck smoke had emerged from the bright blue sky. Slowly, it snaked across the skyliil it had met the shining figure of the sun. In moments, in a refle of the real world, it had covered the surface of Sol’s imitation.

  The world plunged into darkness, before the light of the corrupted star shone down upon the world once more. This time, a crimson red.

  The familiar light of the sun from my home had been repced by Rhazal’s massive bloody eye, gring down at me. In the moments the world had been darkened, it had ged.

  The sky was enshrouded in the bck mist and smoke that I suspect was his calling card, and the reprodu of my childhood home he had made to ule me had been…corrupted.

  It had decayed. Or rather…rotted.

  The homes had all fallen into severe disrepair and were falling into themselves, looking to have been suddenly ed for decades. Withered growth had cracked the streets and sidewalks, turning them into so much rubble. Dust and the st of death was now upon the howling wind, instead of the f smell of oak.

  My own family home had been torn down, and in its pce, there was nothing. Not a siimber remained of my childhood. Only a bnk, lonely lot lingered.

  A familiar voice pierced the apocalyptic wastend that I stood in. A familiar one, no longer pretending to speak in a physical manner.

  PRECURSOR.

  NOW YOU SHALL PAY THE PRICE FOR YOUR HUBRIS.