Zeroth Moment: My Cheat Skill Is Stupid, So I'll Just Ignore It

Topher awakened on the floor; it took him several seconds to realize what had happened, as Kelfir peered down at him in concern. "Christopher? Art well?"

"I'm bad at art," Topher joked back weakly. He grunted, struggling to sit up; the attempt made him dizzy, and he sagged back down to the floor of the Archmage's sanctum with a groan and gripped his head between his hands. "Gurrrrgh. Bad, bad headache."

"Remain still; close your eyes." The Archmage moved smoothly to a side table and poured some liquid into a glass; after a moment, he returned and handed a bright pink drink to Topher. "Drink slowly; it is not palatable."

With agonizing difficulty, Topher managed to sit up enough to sip at the liquid; the taste was like black coffee mixed with orange juice, and he nearly gagged. "Jesus. What is this crap?!"

"Juice of the Sepp fruit," Kelfir responded sagely, nodding at Topher's suffering. "It stimulates the humors, and is particularly prized for its ability to banish headaches and fatigue. You will, however, feel very wretched in about nine hours."

"Let's see if we live that long first." Doggedly, Topher sipped at the glass until he'd drunk roughly half of the juice; his vision steadied before his third sip, and his headache was almost gone by the time he could bring himself to drink no more. "That's it," he gasped, shoving the glass away. "I can't drink any more."

"Curious." Kelfir regarded the glass, then set it down on a small table. "An elf would have been able to consume it all. Perhaps it is a problem of tolerance, such as how humans interact with elven wine."

"Well, shit, I'm glad I found you another way to feel superior," Topher grumped; he pinched the bridge of his nose and took several deep breaths. "Jesus. What the fuck was that?"

"From my perspective," the Archmage supplied imperturbably, "you placed your hand on your Ledger and immediately lost consciousness. I was able to prevent you from injuring yourself in the fall, but I feared to move you; luckily, you regained awareness in only a few moments." He took a sip from the glass of sepp juice himself; Topher winced and tried not to think about germs. "What did you experience?"

Topher's face screwed up with the effort of recollection. "It was like... I don't know. Really weird." He looked down at his hands. "You ever look into two mirrors, facing each other? Each mirror reflects the other, which reflects it reflecting the other... like an infinite chain of copies of everything." He shook his head, trying to drive the memory out of his mind. "Everything else I Validated was simple and easy; why did this happen?"

Kelfir looked contemplative. "It is possible that the Ledger, being part of your Class, acted as a synecdoche." Seeing Topher's confusion, he rolled his eyes. "A part which is a symbol for the whole."

"So I basically Validated my entire Class, dumping my own knowledge back into myself?" Topher's brain hurt even attempting to contemplate the idea; he sagged back onto the floor again, staring up at the ceiling. "Huh. Well, it was pretty disorienting, but I don't feel any different other than the vertigo. And that's going away pretty fast." He sat up experimentally; then clambered to his feet and stretched cautiously. "Doesn't seem to have done any permanent damage, I guess."

"That is well," said the Archmage drily, "since I doubt the convocation would delay for us." He consumed the last of the sepp juice, then placed the empty glass daintily on a tray; Topher was surprised to see that it was already clean. Magic dishware. This motherfucker. "If you are prepared..."

Topher nodded, and Kelfir made another gesture; abruptly, they were back in the common area where Topher had left the others. As he tried to get his bearings, a light chime sounded throughout the floor; he saw Hana and Zanasha poke their heads out of their rooms, while Rudo turned back from the balcony where he'd been resting and watching the clouds scoot by. "The convocation is imminent; please prepare yourselves to leave."

"I believe we are prepared, Archmage." Rudo trotted forward to join them; Topher was surprised to see that the older man had changed his attire, and was now wearing a T-shirt under his tattered blue half-robe; he narrowed his eyes at the Innkeeper, who pretended innocence. How come I'm the only one who doesn't get to dress down?

A few moments later, Hana arrived -- she was still dressed in her T-shirt and jeans, but her hair was freshly washed and smelled faintly of lime and citrus. Topher could see that she had applied a small amount of makeup to accentuate her eyes and lips. The overall effect was illusive, but pleasant; Guess it does kind of sell her as she is, rather than what they might expect. Zanasha, on the other hand, was striking.

She wore the armor Rudo had gifted her back in ICEBREAKERS; however, it had been cleverly altered, and Topher frowned as he detected Hana's delicate touch of fashion. Small touches of color had been added at various points to match the half-orc's hair, eyes, and earrings, and the serviceable padding upon which the armor rested had been replaced with a high-collared black garment which fitted her body snugly and lent her the air of an elite uniformed operative. Other, less overt changes -- slimming lines of paint on her boot toes, thin strands of leather on her weapon belt which suggested the shape of a thong bikini -- accentuated her femininity aggressively in a hundred small, devious ways that played merry havoc with Topher's blood pressure. Thus attired and appointed, you and Miss Jones will command their attention; Miss Shirakane and I will thus be free to take other actions while others are thus distracted. Topher scowled at Rudo, who gave him an impertinent thumbs-up.

"If you will all gather together," Kelfir intoned, raising his hands to summon his Wyrd; Hana and Rudo stepped nearer to him, but Topher instead remained where he was and proffered his arm to Zanasha. At first, she hesitated; but then, all in a rush of motion, she slipped one hand through the crook of his elbow and gripped his forearm possessively with the other as she flashed him her half-shy smile.

Topher grinned back, feeling impossibly light. You want us to be the center of attention, fine. But we'll decide how we do it. The light gathered around them, and they all vanished.

He emerged from his long moment of null-consciousness into yet another cavern; he squinted around, trying to get his bearings, before remembering that Zanasha was still holding his elbow and smiling despite himself. Get a grip, old man. But even his best efforts at self-defeat couldn't bring him down today; he caressed her fingertips with his own, thrilling at the sensation, before realizing that her hands were bare. "Hey, no gauntlets? You sure you'll be all right?"

She smiled back at him, eyes alight with jubilation. "My innate Defense now exceeds that which would be granted by most armor," she murmured with subdued pride. "I need protect only my vitals, to safeguard against critical hits." She squeezed his elbow again, then released him reluctantly; her eyes began scanning the environment, turning cool and hooded as she assessed the place for threats.

"Chainmail bikini. Got it." He smirked, following her gaze around the area; the enclosure seemed about a hundred yards long and about half that in length, with a curiously organic shape and smooth, shiny black walls that curved and warped the light in a strange way that made him think of black holes in the better class of science-fiction movie. "Where the hell are we, anyway? Some kind of weird Archmage sex dungeon?"

"This place," replied Kelfir, with noticeable restraint, "is the Sanctum; it lies at the center of our world, is purported to be the origin point of its creation, and is kept sacrosanct by a multitude of arcane and divine laws. Your invitation to enter it is an honor normally granted only to one or two persons per generation, and I will thank you not to refer to it as a 'sex dungeon'." He turned away, indicating the center of the area. "Let us proceed. The others shall arrive momentarily."

As they crossed the space, Topher was struck by the strangeness of its shape; at first, it had seemed vaguely oblong, but as he moved through it, subtle shifts and shimmerings on the arched dome overhead revealed weird curves and protrusions on its exterior as seen from the inside. "It's like a heart, or something," he marveled. "Look -- that part at the top is rounded, like a dome, but the part next to it curves down like gums."

"Indeed," Rudo agreed. "The far corners are sharply pointed, but the nearer are gently curved; I cannot imagine what process might have created it."

"He did say 'divine' laws," Hana pointed out. "Maybe gods, or something?"

Topher shook his head; They worship divinity, rather than the divine; there is no pantheon, no Almighty God like the Christians. "I don't think they have those here, to be honest." He turned to Zanasha. "You're the only one of us actually from this world -- does the idea of an individual, personified god even mean anything to you?"

Zanasha shook her head, looking thoughtful. "The gods are... the gods? But they have no names or forms; I always assumed they were beyond such things." She shrugged. "I suspect my understanding fails in some way; a matter of differing culture, perhaps." She sidled closer to Topher, smiling. "Perhaps you might give me an in-depth education of your world's concept of divinity at some later time?"

Topher blushed hotly from scalp to toes; Hana let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh, then darted up to Zanasha's other side and whispered something clipped and verbose into the half-orc's other ear. Zanasha's golden eyes widened, and she covered her face with her palm as she stared at the floor in mortification. "Oh, gods," she choked.

"Yes," said Hana sternly, "exactly like that, but usually much louder." She tossed her hair in annoyance and trotted away, moving up to flank Kelfir along with Rudo as Topher fell back to aid Zanasha.

"Topher," she groaned, "I did not mean... oh, I am very embarrassed."

He patted her hand, hoping it wasn't coming off as condescending. "It's fine. I knew what you meant, but that was probably a little rough for her -- she did just confess her feelings to me yesterday, after all." He stared at the young Japanese woman's retreating back. "So I think she handled it pretty well, all things considered."

The half-orc sighed. "Ak'zul. This is going to be... very difficult."

"Hey." He squeezed her hand, then looked her in the eyes when she turned to behold him. "She knows you mean well. I'm sure you'll get a chance to clear the air later." He started to say more, but was distracted as a bubble of bright cerulean light bloomed ahead beyond Kelfir; that'll be Quint's water aspect. Guess the show's starting.

As the light swelled, the smooth walls of the cavern reflected it oddly; concentric, distorted rings of mirroring light swam and pulsed all around them, as though the Sanctum were beating in time with the Archmage's power. Then the light faded, and Topher caught sight of Quint Aumraham for the first time since the Archmage's tower.

The first thing he was struck by was how harrowed the Archmage looked; in all their previous meetings, he had had the impression that the older man was bowing under the weight of a massive responsibility, but before now he'd at least seemed equal to the task. This time, it was clear that it had broken him; his eyes were red-rimmed from tears, and his heretofore bushy beard now looked flattened and scraggly. His posture, already slightly hunched in the past, now seemed to waver on the verge of collapse, and his piercing gaze had become watery and unfocused.

The second thing Topher noticed was that the Archmage was not alone; a dark-haired figure, younger and much more hale, supported him on the opposite side of his staff. Topher blinked, startled by what he was seeing, and his mouth dropped open in shock. "Hey, that's Zashe. The, uh, king guy. Of Sheonn." He resisted the impulse to wave.

"The Archmage did say that we would be in august company," Zanasha agreed. She squeezed Topher's hand again, then dropped it and hurried to stand alongside Hana; Topher hustled to do the same on Rudo's right, risking a terse nod to the monarch.

There was a brief, pregnant moment of silence; then, with obvious reluctance, the golden light beneath Kelfir's feet slid across the space between them and formed a pair of chairs behind Quint and Zashe (though Topher noticed that only Zashe's was formed in the shape of a throne). Five more chairs appeared opposite them, and Kelfir smoothly strode forward and took his place in the center one as the others did the same on either side. "Archmage Siukh," he said firmly, "can bring her own furniture."

"You mean I can't just sit in your lap?" Darkness swirled, and the buxom figure of the Archmage of the Black Tower manifested like smoke out of the swirling shadows. Sahlerra pouted, starting to sashay in Kelfir's direction, but brilliant lines of light stabbed with sudden viciousness from the floor up into her face and abdomen; Topher gasped, then gasped again as he saw that they had been absorbed by pools of impossibly tenebrous gloom that had crawled up and over her face and body in the space between the instants. "Don't play so rough," she admonished the elf, banishing the light with a shattering gesture, then slumped backwards seductively as a star-infused fainting couch of liquid night formed beneath her. "So, we're here. Now what?"

"Now," Zashe interrupted in a gravelly tone, "we handle the crisis before us." He turned to Topher and the others. "Heroes, I will not waste your time with apologies; we must proceed to the heart of the matter, and quickly." He turned to Quint. "Archmage Aumraham, if you would...?"

Quint bestirred himself reluctantly; he seemed eaten to the bone with weariness. "The battle," he began hoarsely, then stopped for a prolonged fit of coughing; Topher Summoned a glass of water, but the Archmage waved him away. "The battle was an opportunity I could not neglect," he started over. "Our intelligence indicated that a substantial percentage of..." he trailed off, staring into space. "Oh, the hells with this."

Gesturing bitterly, he conjured a sphere of azure light in the space between them all; within it, Topher glimpsed a rocky, granulated disc of land bisecting the two halves of the sphere. The upper surface was covered with water, while the bottom glowed with lava; That's the world, he grasped, finally. The Lava Mountains are the fucking underside of the world, and Dragon Valley goes down through the earth to bypass the impassable mountains that cut Vorn off from the Demon Lands. That's why that stupid gravity staircase was there!

"I have wrought terrible destruction," Quint soldiered on, expanding the sphere; as it did so, Topher could see that he was zooming in on the site of the battle, towards the center of the map. "My intentions... no, it is irrelevant. I alone am--"

"If we may dispense with the caterwauling," Sahlerra interrupted smoothly, "what we are to discuss is this." She indicated the site in question, a great chunk chewed out of the upper half of the disc which stretched nearly halfway through its thickness. "The structural integrity of the world is at risk; the land may recover, but it will take time, and there will be consequences. The dungeon which will form..." she lapsed into silence, looking grim. "Its Guardian will make the Five Immortal Beasts look like playful kittens."

"Hold on." Topher stepped forward, peering at the devastation. "Leaving aside the whole question of how all that's going to shake out -- and how dungeons work, which I presume you all know but we don't -- is this even something we have time to care about? I thought the Demon Lord was going to wipe us all out?"

"He may not have to at this juncture," Sahlerra returned dejectedly. "All our armies have been destroyed; Thoxen, Sheonn, and both Piorens have lost the entirety of their armed forces at a stroke. The shared economy of all four kingdoms is wrecked and ruined, and civil war will worsen the conditions even further in the east. Kholoth's forces, now a hundredth of their previous strength, nevertheless eclipse us utterly; merely the threat of their invasion and destruction will paralyze all the nations long enough for the chaos to worsen the situation. And into that vacuum..." she pointed at the projection. "We will face the possibility of the largest Dungeon Break ever imagined."

"Okay." Topher stood and began to pace; he was aware that it looked out-of-place with everyone else sitting, but he didn't care. He needed to think. "So we need to stabilize things politically. What happened to cause the war in Pioren?"

The others looked at each other and then back at him with expressions of incredulity; he shook his fist at them. "Otherworlder, remember? Explain it to me, goddammit! How are you gonna solve the problem if you can't even define it?"

There was a short, shocked silence, then Zashe chuckled. "He does have a knack for cutting to the heart of complex quandaries," he commented drily, raising an imaginary glass of derjet to Topher. "Let us humor him."

Sahlerra heaved a massive sigh, her extravagant bosoms bouncing with the force. "Pioren," she began, very acidly, "has a long and bloody history of division. Centuries ago, the land was one, but a bitter and bloody rivalry between two princes for the hand of a singular princess sundered the kingdom in two. Wrong compounded wrong, retaliation beget revenge..." she shrugged. "It is a common occurrence in your world as well, if the tales Takano recounted to me are accurate."

Topher grimaced. "Yeah." He nodded for the Archmage to continue.

"Since then," she went on, "many attempts to reunify the land have been made; but all have failed, usually disastrously. Worse, families from both sides have interbred with the others, such that each nation lays claim to territories within the other even at the local level; only in the last hundred years, where the threat of the Demon King has been dire enough to quell such squabbling, have they --"

"Wait." Topher raised his hand, his eyes widening in horror; to either side, he could see Hana and Rudo's expressions mirroring his own. "Wait a fucking minute. What the fuck did you just say?"

"The threat of the Demon King," repeated Sahlerra, looking confused. "The nations collaborated..."

"Jesus." Topher sat down heavily in the middle of the floor and buried his face in his hands; the others all stared at him. "Jesus Christ." His brain was collapsing and crumbling under the weight of the realization that exploded throughout him. "That's it. That's why."

We've ruined everything.