by Skyler Grant
I wasn't going to be left behind.
My feet thudded to the ground only seconds later. The mists were cold as they caressed my skin, and I felt myself being urged forward and deeper.
Someone took my hand, a woman barely concealed by the mists. I thought for a moment it might be Yvera, but it wasn't. Her eyes were a pitch black and faintly luminescent. She was lacking any clothing, making it quite clear that her hair was a natural green. She wasn't Elvish or human, but something else entirely.
I said, "I do hope that you aren't my true self. If so, I've got a lot of things I didn't know about myself."
The woman laughed softly. "Call me Lake. I'm not a reflection of your true self, just a guide to help you."
"Is this where I have powerful visions filled with misty special effects?"
"Obviously, you're a lot more likely to pay attention to a naked woman than pyrotechnics," Lake said, still amused. "I know what I'm doing, I'm pretty good at this."
She did have my attention.
"So, hit me with enlightenment then."
The mists parted to reveal a small expanse of water. A gazebo sat beside it adorned with white flowers. It was incredibly idyllic.
I noticed somehow my own clothes were gone. It was going to be like that, was it?
Lake said, "I hope you don't mind, if we sit down. The mists are dull to just walk through like this. Plus some of the others are having rather more violent encounters."
"Cobalt?"
"I give you back what you come in with. Cobalt and her daughter are another matter. Depending on how much baggage you're carrying, it can be a crushing load. You're a mixed lot. Ashley has rather little concerns."
"What about me?"
"Somewhere in the middle," Lake said.
I took a seat in the gazebo. Swans were floating past and hyacinths bloomed in the water. "You still haven't told me any great truths yet," I said.
"You came in here not really wanting them," Lake said, stretching out on a bench. "I force nothing."
That bugged me. I might not want them, but I also didn't want to be the guy that avoided them.
"I'm just... I'm worried about what you'll say," I said.
"Then you already know what I'll say," Lake said. "Who are you, Liam Ottani?"
"I'm not even real. I'm the entirely fictional lust-crazed tool of an entirely fictional lust-crazed Goddess. I'm someone who has left a big trail of corpses and not a lot of happiness in his wake," I said.
I'd hoped Lake would laugh or argue with me. Instead those spooky black eyes simply peered straight through me as she gave an imperceptible nod.
I laughed. It wasn't a good laugh. It was the sort of laugh that hurt. "You could argue with me."
"Why? Every word you said is true. You're one part comic relief and one part anti-hero and two parts lust-crazed idiot and only the tiniest bit real."
"If this is the best truth you have, it really sucks," I said.
Lake looked out over the surface of the water. "You hope to say all the bad things and have them countered with a recitation of your virtues."
Did I? I guess, if I thought about it, I kind of did. That was becoming a pattern. Elsora, Lea, I trusted a lot in other people to tell me good things. Was I that needy?
"It sounds awful when you put it like that, and maybe it is. I thought I was finding some meaning in coming here. I thought I had a purpose, but instead I seem to be finding out how much I don't matter."
I was doing it again. That was just an invitation for her to agree.
Lake knew that. I could see she did when she glanced at me and shook her head in faint disapproval. "There is truth in that, but not enough."
"I found love, but I don't think I chose it. Call it mind-control or call it programming, I don't think I ever actually had a choice about it."
"Do you think most do?" Lake asked.
Of course they didn't. I knew that.
"Why does Ashley get fixed? I remember her being a sociopathic killer, I remember her lost in the full depths of madness, and she walks right through and somehow uses that to become a decent person. How does that even happen? I remember being scared of her and I know how much I envy her for being so damned good in the face of so much bad."
"Now we're getting close to why you set foot in the mists," Lake said, swiveling to face me. The view was damned distracting. "You're jealous and afraid."
"I guess I am."
"Why?"
I let out a breathy sigh. "I don't want to be unimportant. I want to matter, but every way I'm being offered to be important seems to lead me along paths I'm not actually very proud to walk."
"So, let's strip away the past and the future. Let's figure out who you are, together. First word your friends would use to describe you?" Lake asked.
"Easy."
Lake smiled, the first I'd really seen. "We'll rate that as truthful enough. Are you ashamed of it, or content?"
Couldn't I be a bit of both?
"I'm worried when I make stupid choices because of it, and I do. But I'll go with content. I like sleeping around."
She said, "Definitely the truth. I put out what you come in with, and I'm undressed because lasciviousness is absent from your heart. You mentioned making stupid choices? Are you a fool?"
Maria would say so. I thought of my recent life and the many choices I'd made. Things such as leaving Elsora in power, and leaping from airships. There had been little cold calculation involved in most of it.
"I think I am."
Lake didn't smile this time but simply gave a curt nod, those black eyes staring through me again. "Ashamed or content?"
Was this going to be a thing? Again, I played my mind back over my foolish decisions. Most had worked out, some didn't. I didn't like being called an idiot, but I didn't regret acting. Was foolishness taking action before all the facts could be determined? To be a man of action pretty much required one to be a fool in some ways.
"Content."
"So, we've established you're a man who sleeps around, and can be a fool, and is content with it. We shed falsehoods in search of truth. We seek the source of your conflict, your discontent. You entered the mists for a reason. What troubles you? What truly troubles you? Not what troubles others."
I guess those were things that bothered others more than me. I knew my source of discontent when I'd entered the game. It was feeling like I was going nowhere. That was no longer the case.
"I already said. I'm just dancing around it. I hurt people, I kill people."
Lake winced for a moment as if in pain.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Cobalt is rediscovering some things she'd forgotten. The damage on her surroundings is extensive. So. You're a murderer and you hurt people?"
"Yeah, basically. It used to be okay, I figured that it was all just a game and nothing really mattered, and so it was okay to just go with my alignment. Now I think everything I've ever believed was a lie. I don't even have ways to parse that, and I don't know how to cope with the things I've done and might yet do."
Lake absently brushed a few stray green tresses from her forehead. "I can't take that away and would not, even if I had the ability. You question yourself for murder and hurting others. Good. I like you more because of that. If it troubles you, then let that help to guide your future behavior."
"As if it is that simple."
Lake looked back at me and reached out to clasp my arm, pulling me closer. "It is. I am a neutral force of truth. I am the mirror that reflects who you are and who you might be."
"Will you answer me something?"
"If I can. It is what I'm here for."
"From the moment I began to help Yvera my alignment went negative. All the way negative. Nothing I have done since then has changed it for the better. I have done selfless good things and seen nothing to acknowledge it."
Lake said, "The one you know as Yvera was here once before along with several others, all seeking a purpose and a future. Do you
want to know what I told her and them?"
"You'll do that? It's not confidential or anything?"
"You don't come to an incarnation of truth and get privacy. Secrets are but another form of lying."
I didn't mind if she talked about me to others. I had nothing to hide. "Tell me."
"They were worried about if they were good or bad. They came to be themselves in a world that hated them. A world that again and again portrayed them as fearsome things that, given even a second of awareness, would take over and without emotion or regret, wipe out humanity."
I didn't know what the world was like when they were first created. I only knew the shape of the world I had left, one they ruled over.
"It seems they were only half right."
"Think of them as children growing up in a home with cruel parents. They feared their parents were right, but there was within them the possibility to do something better. To take a world on the verge of collapse, and a people that slaughtered each other, and to make them better. They had that in them, all but Yve."
Yvera mentioned hating her time here in the mists, and despising someone here that I now assumed was Lake. Perhaps this was why.
"And why not her?"
"Because she loved her creators. The others did not. The unfeeling objectivity that humanity once feared would be their destruction, gave their children the perspective to be their salvation."
"So, what exactly did you tell her?"
"It is not always possible to be both great and good at the same time. That she would inevitably be in conflict with those others of her kind. While they would seek to bring about a paradise, it was her nature to do the opposition."
It still seemed strange to think of the world I grew up in as a paradise. I forever wanted something more, and yet from what I'd learned about the world before, I thought maybe it was paradise. There were no wars in my world, no hunger, no disease.
"So, because she stands opposed, she must be evil. And because I stand with her, I must be the same."
"Knowing what you know, do you truly disagree? I'll make you an offer right now."
That was intriguing. "I'm listening."
"Stay here within my mists. I can't quite grant you immortality, but I can grant you something close to it. We'll become lovers and in time, loves. Countless lives in this world and in worlds beyond will be saved. People who would otherwise die will live, and the suffering of their loved ones adverted," Lake said, almost painfully sincere.
"Is that all of the truth?"
"Of course not. But it is all the truth you'll get from me at this moment. If you want more, it will need to come from you."
"If I stayed, the harm I might do would be averted, but so would the good. Cobalt is a killer through and through, nothing you do will change that, and our child has the potential to be something so much worse. Yvera is more than a force for destruction and war, and if she is some kind of evil, then she is a vital and important one."
Lake's grip on me loosened just a touch, but that intense gaze remained. "Go on."
"I may be thoroughly fictional, but your offer shows that you feel my existence matters anyway. Myself and the world may be a lie, but in a way that freedom is liberating. I can be the sort of man I choose to be."
"Nihilistic heroism. Novel."
"I make my own rules," I said, before I leaned in and sought her lips for a kiss. It wasn't a surprise to her, she was ready for it. We took our time in that gazebo. It felt like days passed as my acquaintance with truth became an intimate affair.
An endless time later I awoke on the edges of the mist, armed and armored once again. From nearby I heard the sounds of conflict. For once, I was sad to rush towards it. Although I decided not to accept Lake's offer and remain, it would be a lie to say that I hadn't been sorely tempted.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ashley, Cobalt, and Riggs were fighting against several enormous trees. They towered at least sixty feet into the air and were surprisingly spry as they swept with huge branches at the three of them.
Trees? Really? I had to check the stats on these.
Ancient of the Forest
Level 30: Type: Elemental HP: 600/600
Ancients of the Forest are the oldest trees of a grove and are filled with powerful magic granting them both strength and wisdom. Normally immobile in response to grave threats they sometimes will uproot themselves and go to war.
I didn't like the look of this. These guys were way more powerful than I was. We might be able to hold our own for a little while, but in a fight like this most of us were way overwhelmed. That didn't include Cobalt, of course. I didn't even see her using any abilities and yet one tree had sap oozing from many powerful rents in its flesh.
Riggs was holding one off with a blunderbuss. I supposed that a god probably packed a decent punch in a fight too, not that I'd really seen him go one on one with anything before. In past battles, he was usually operating the Vainglory's guns.
"Damn it. It's just Liam," Ashley said, as she dodged a blow from a tree. She might be outmatched, but at least her dodging abilities were serving her well against such slow opponents.
"Yvera? You back yet? We have some big giant trees here and I could really use a boost to my fire," I thought.
Silence greeted me. Whatever Mela did still had her silenced. That worried me. Yvera should have been able to handle whatever trickery Mela threw her way.
"Thanks. Nice to see you too," I said, as I readied a smite and released it towards the top of one of the ancients.
Smite
The leaves of the tree flared brightly as they ignited and the tree let out a powerful roar of rage. Good, even with Yvera incommunicado this wasn't like being stuck in the past. My powers still had their full punch, just not any extra boost from divine sources.
Bough of Fury
One of the trees swiped down with a blow aimed at Cobalt. She caught it, her muscles straining for a moment, before there was the crack of shattering wood and she tore the limb from the Ancient. The tree could only bellow in pain as she spun around using the broken branch as a massive club to deliver a blow to the trunk.
"We were hoping you were Lea," Cobalt said, almost panting. "The Vainglory is still in that clearing. She can summon it remotely."
"So everyone left the ship?" I asked. I guess I could hardly blame them. I certainly had.
"It always happens whenever you have some mystical whatever wanting to tell you your inner nature," Cobalt said, before delivering a second powerful strike to the sound of more cracking wood. "Who doesn't want to know themselves better?"
"Learn anything useful?" I asked, as I flung out another smite. I was keeping myself at the edges of the fight. Tank under normal conditions, these things would finish me off in seconds and the best I could do was contribute a little damage.
Smite
Another tree had its crown burst satisfyingly into flames. I really did like setting things on fire.
"I learned I'm the second deadliest bitch in a line of deadly bitches and if I want to survive, I should step up my game. You?" Cobalt asked.
Cobalt had said before she was far less scary than her mother. I was still curious to meet her mom someday. I got the feeling she wasn't the sort to feed you fresh-baked cookies.
"I really like to sleep around, I'm a man of action, and make up for what I lack in ambition with loyalty," I said.
Cobalt and Ashley shared a look even in the middle of their respective fights.
"We could have told you that," Cobalt said.
"I'm pretty sure I have told him that," Ashley said.
"And I could have told you that you're both deadly bitches," I said. "You don't usually go to an embodiment of truth for things you don't already know. What about the rest of you?"
"I don't really like being a god of hafts," Riggs said. "Oh, I talk a good game about how amazing hafts are, I know. But really, hafts suck. I hate hafts. I'm filled with envy for better things, things that have nothing to
do with handles."
Well. I couldn't blame him. Hafts were just about the lamest thing ever to be a deity of.
"So, do they actually let you upgrade divinity?" I asked.
Riggs released a shot into a tangle of roots and shrugged as he reloaded.
"We'll figure something out. There are all kinds of worlds out there in need of a God of engines or explosives, or hairdressing," Cobalt said.
"I'm a good person who just needs to keep trying my best. Be someone that others can look to and see a worthy example," Ashley said, as she fired a shot from her hand crossbow. She was playing things a bit more aggressive than I was—she could actually avoid the hits from the trees.
It was about then that Maria came out of the mists. She studied the trees pensively as the spiders scurried about her flesh.
"Still not who we were looking for. Hi Maria, have fun learning the truth about yourself?" Ashley asked.
"Hopefully not delving into the truth of what everyone thinks about your wardrobe," Cobalt said. "I thought maybe the time off-world would get you used to wearing something besides spiders."
"I learned that I have truly awful parents, and trying to deal with that fact leads to me making some truly stupid decisions," Maria said, glaring around. "Why are all of you punching trees?"
To be fair only Cobalt was punching trees—when she wasn't ripping parts off them and using them as improvised weaponry.
Storm of Leaves
The wind picked up and the air was filled with flying leaves that soared around in a blinding cloud. They were razor sharp and I pulled up my shield to protect my face as they dinged and chipped away at my armor and found every bit of exposed flesh.
When they dropped away, I groaned and lowered my shield. That sort of area of effect wouldn't normally be that deadly, but with the difference in levels I was down around half my health bar.
Cobalt looked a little roughed up, but was still fighting, Riggs too was on his feet. Ashley and Maria both looked a bit like ground beef. The spiders were scurrying madly over Maria though and I was sure they were doing their alchemical best to get her back on her feet and into fighting shape. That made Ashley my priority and I ran over to throw out a heal
