Ch7.58 Revelations

“Longing to…what? From me? What do you mean?” 

Pharaoh barks to welcome Gwydion and Alma as the enter the living-chamber. Doria flashes them a bright smile. “Oh good! He can barely eat or drink with the shackles on. I’ve been feeding him like a baby. Did you know his May doesn’t have the slightest interest in joining the Guardia?”

“She’s not my May,” Sky protests, still absorbing Doria’s teasing tone that clearly insinuated a romantic attachment between himself and the admittedly pretty but otherwise uninteresting Bunny. But looking at Alma and her paramour, both serious and right now looking exactly like experienced Guardia about to interrogate a subject, he finds himself revising his assessment of how impossible that must be. If this world’s Alma and Gwydion are tough and skilled Dei officers, might not this world’s May have just as much potential? Now he wonders if the two older girls are private detectives or mages or professional boxers over here. 

Alma takes out Sky’s keyring and hands it to Doria. “Thank you, Doria. Feel free to release him. I see you have been in good company while I was out…Sergeant. Did it get too much in the way of picking the lock on your handcuffs?”

“You chose a charming jailer,” Sky replies, noting the hesitation over what to call him. “I just felt it would have been rude to escape with her here.” He points to the smallest key on the ring. “That one, Priestess. Thank you.” He looks over Gwydion’s uniform, taking in the impeccable tailoring. This one and the one in his timeline at least share a fastidious sense of style. “Sergeant Gwydion. I understand you know me here as well?”

Gwydion looks him over before he nods. “I do.” He looks at Alma. “You weren’t kidding when you said this was the definition of strange.” 

“It is, isn’t it?” Alma puts her hands on the back of the chair on which Doria sits. “But the soul matches. Other than being too whole to be Sky’s.” 

Doria finally unlocks the right shackle, and mana begins flowing freely again throughout Sky’s body. It is an enormous relief, but he cannot help but feel disturbed at the thought of his doppelgänger’s damaged soul. 

“Maybe I can find something to explain what is going on.” Gwydion turns to Sky. “I hope you don’t mind if I examine you.” With a murmur of apology, he takes Doria’s place on the wooden chair, grimacing as he discovers he has just sat in a puddle of water left behind by the ever-wet naiad. 

Sky chuckles in mild astonishment at Gwydion’s words as he unlocks the left shackle and frees himself, putting his shackles and keys into their appropriate pockets. “Please, go ahead. I wouldn’t think you could find anything, but Acting-Inspector Alma apparently can see my soul, which indicates ability well beyond my experience with her counterpart. And the Senator Gwydion that I know does not seem to have any divine ability of note at all. But Alma tells me you are the Hammer of Devils.”

“That’s right. I also happen to be trained as a mage. Senator…” Gwydion mulls over the word. “I enjoy politics about as much as having all my teeth pulled out one by one,” he mutters as his eyes glow golden, and Sky feels his hair stand on end and his skin prickles. As Gwydion’s aura expands, Sky feels an atavistic fear, coupled with a desire to attack. He is the Devil’s Hammer! But Sky clenches his jaw to master his fear. 

“Why don’t you tell Gwydion a little more of this other version of us you say you’ve met?” Alma suggests. Sky realizes she is trying to help them both relax. Sky’s own aura is beginning to flare in reaction to Gwydion’s, making them both uncomfortable. “He was rather curious about it when I told him what you told me.”

“Well…keep in mind that I hardly know the two of you there,” Sky says. “We met just yesterday. And the briefing was hurried. Since then, it was a lot of moving around.” He considers how best to describe him. “The Senator loves his family very much. He is quite protective of them. Of course he’s in an extreme situation just now – becoming more protective is a normal response. But his wife had to arrange a secret meeting with me to convince me to go to the grotto. Apparently she didn’t trust him to believe her.”

“I’m married? To someone who doesn’t trust me?” Dion shakes his head and glances at Alma. “Lovely…”

“I didn’t tell him that part,” Alma explains to Sky.

“I see.” Sky pauses, then says to Alma, cautious, “What else does he know about me? The me from here that is. I don’t wish to accidentally reveal some secret of your Sky’s, something which you may know but Gwydion does not.”

Alma thinks about this. “I don’t recall anything that might come up in conversation that Gwydion doesn’t know about.”

“Sky is a close friend.” Gwydion says, still focused on examining Sky. “More, he is a brother. You don’t need to tiptoe around the devil in the room with me.”

“A brother…” The idea is barely believable. But then so is the thought that he has fallen in love with a Bunny. He has not allowed himself such freedom with his emotions for decades, not since he left Earth. There have been moments, with Somrak a handful of times, and with the Commander’s little girl. But even so, he would stumble over trying to describe Somrak as a friend. He looks at Alma. “And he is one of your closest friends, even though you know what he is. The Sky of this world is truly blessed.” To Gwydion, he says, “And your brother, though you are the Hammer of Devils. Astonishing.”

Gwydion slips off his jacket and rolls up the sleeve of this shirt, showing the mark left by an apothecary’s poison in the form of a black glyph. “Hammer of Devils is what Sky calls me. A sphere awakened in me when we had to rescue him from imprisonment and torture.”

Sky examines the glyph. He recognizes it, from one of the classical languages of Hell. It reads ‘gatekeeper,’ which, due to his background, has a connotation of ‘prison guard.’ “There have been none for…well, it’s legendary. And if you have that sphere here, just recently awakened, then…”

“It must still be dormant within your Senator,” Gwydion confirms, nodding. “Whose wife you haven’t told me about yet.”

“Ah…well she is…sweet. To her family. Quite insistent on proper forms – she’s called out Somrak a couple of times for ordering them around. Amusing to watch him grumble. She looks like a strong wind, or a powerful shout, would blow her away. But I see a glimmer of this Alma in her.” Sky smiles a little at Alma and Gwydion. “Though I think she’d squeak like a mouse if she saw either of you. And faint dead away.”

Gwydion looks at Sky, shocked. “You…are saying I am married to a meek, frightened Alma in this….reality of yours?” He looks like he’s having trouble even processing it.

“Well, for all I know she normally dresses in leather and goes around hunting vampires,” Sky replies. “But that’s my impression of her, yes.”

Alma drapes her arms over Gwydion’s shoulders from behind, prompting a smile from Sky at the show of affection. “And we have four lovely children, one of which is a baby godling and the other three are Rosemary, Cherry and Mayumi.”

Dion freezes a moment. “Cherry and Merri are my…daughters?” His eyes lose their golden light and he starts to laugh.

Sky lets the laugh run its course before saying, “They call you Daddy, and they seem to think you hung the stars in the sky. May feels the same way. You say that here she is called Mayumi?” 

Alma nods, “She is. In fact, people call her May but she doesn’t much like that.” She kisses Dion’s cheek. “So how is that for strange?” she asks him.

Dion shakes his head in wonder. “Strange does not begin to describe it. Just yesterday, Cherry and Merri were teasing me by offering to clean up my bedroom in very short, frilly maid outfits.” He takes a breath, thinking. “It seems this other couple have known each other for quite a lot longer. And that something in their past was substantially different from ours.”

“They do all seem very familiar with each other,” Sky says. “As if they’ve been together for decades. All their lives, in the case of the children. So…you two have seven children here?”

“Oh? Oh no… we have only known each other for a few months. Been together for less than a year.” Gwydion turns his head to look at Alma and smiles, and Sky thinks he can see some of that tender regard that the Senator has for his Lady, but not cloying. Yet.

“The Bunnies are mine. From a previous relationship.” Alma explains, looking at Gwydion but talking to Sky. “Gwydion is mostly just a very dear friend to them. Part of the family. Though one or two regard him as a father figure.” She looks at Sky with a grin. “And the same is true for you, Uncle Sky.”

Sky blinks at that. “Me, a father figure?”

“Not for Mayumiii…” Doria says in a low singsong as she hands cups of tea to all three of them.

Sky feels himself blush at the humor evinced by the others. He clears his throat. “And they have the same names? Or almost the same. Wait, do they even look the same?” He puts his hand at the height of a rather short human. “Rosemary is about this tall, red curly hair, green eyes, pale with freckles. Cherish about the same height, golden-brown skin and eyes, big poof of kinky hair. May is a little taller, olive skin, straight black hair, brown eyes with epicanthic folds. All with long ears and puffy tails. Do they sound the same?”

“Sounds like them,” Dion concedes. “Though… Cherish?” He looks quizzically at Alma.

She shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She looks at Sky. “Ours goes by Cherry, and Rosemary usually goes by Merri, but she doesn’t care one way or the other. The four remaining ones are Sage, Kori, Chime and Tulip. Each looks different, though all share the ears and tails, each with their own accents except for the younger ones, who mostly sound local to Three Rats.”

“Accents? As in speaking styles?” Alma nods at Sky’s question. “Huh. The three I know sound like average, well-educated Leeward First-Ringers to me. Same accents as their parents. But it seems that although they have a different father, they are counterparts to the ones here.” He sips his tea, grateful that he doesn’t have to let Doria hold the cup for him this time. “Anyway…I do have a guess at what’s going on.”

“If you are going to suggest a parallel reality with slight temporal asynchrony, then your guess is probably correct,” Dion says. “Which is why I am choosing to accept your story as truthful. Even though all scholars of repute agree that crossing between diverging timelines is impossible.”

Sky grins sheepishly. “I wouldn’t have come up with quite the same vocabulary, but basically, yes. With a big scoop of Fate tossed in.”

Doria, who has been keeping Pharaoh occupied for the past several minutes, speaks up. “You said you went through a pool with rainbow glimmers? I…fell into such a pool once, myself. I think it was in that direction.” She nods toward the rage-digging chamber. 

“You switched between timelines?” Gwydion asks, turning to focus on her in urgent interest. “When did this happen?”

“Oh, decades ago,” Doria says. “And I don’t know that I did switch. But things felt…off? And when I went to ask the Oracle about it, she studied me like you just did with Sky. And told me I had to dive once again into the pool the next midnight. After that, things felt fine, but the next day the tunnel to that pool was plugged with rock. I’d forgotten about it years ago, until now.” She looks back at the expressions on the other three. “Hey, living with the Oracle, as strange things go, that’s pretty minor.”

“And now I’m here,” Sky says after a moment. “And your friend is there for a reason. He must have some knowledge from here that will tilt the scales, allow something important to happen. Something I wouldn’t know to do. Perhaps something to do with this Nekh fellow.”

“Well, that is another confusing bit,” Gwydion notes. “You claim my Uncle is dead in your reality and Nekh is alive. However, Nekh never moved against my Uncle here. And also, Sky had very little to do directly with Nekh’s death. Alma and I were the only gods fighting him.”

Alma taps her lip with a finger. “True. Some of those parts don’t make sense. Unless…” Alma turns to Sky. “How powerful are the Dukaines in your world?”

“Very,” he says. “It’s only recently become clear just how powerful. They have taken over all organized crime on the Insula, as far as we can tell, coopting gangs and eliminating any resistance. They’re the ones who assassinated Archon Math and numerous other key figures. And Nekh has taken over the Guardia and is using them to wage an all-out war against the gang. That’s why so many people are supporting him. But…I’m more convinced than ever of what I was already suspecting. Nekh controls the Dukaines, doesn’t he?”

Alma nods, her eyes darkening. “And he unleashed them on us, even inside the Curia. Thankfully we were able to stop him before he took control of the whole of the Fourth Ring, though, so there was never a real civil war. Well, there was a war as the gang broke into shards but a coordinated attack of a whole gang would have been much worse. Three Rats was meant to be the final link in Nekh’s chain, actually.”

“It shattered before he managed to close the circle,” Gwydion adds.

“I suppose that’s valuable information for me to carry back,” Sky says. “But I will need to know everything, in case something that may even seem insignificant turns out to be important there. And most important…how did you kill him?”

“We…” Sky can see that Gwydion looks uneasy at this. He glances at Alma. “He was weakened by the Godstriker. Something of a soulbound weapon. And then…” 

“And then I burned the soul out of his body,” Alma says with a sigh, as if this is some part of an old disagreement of theirs. Sky files that away but sees no point in asking. “Something we have been thoroughly punished for, I assure you.” 

Sky looks from one to the other, frowning. “Punished for taking out the biggest threat to the peace and welfare of the Insula. Typical. Can you get this Godstriker? Maybe I am meant to take it back with me.” He taps his short sword. “Clearly it is possible to bring equipment across.”

Alma thinks for a moment before she explains, “We have no idea where the Godstriker was taken. They wouldn’t allow an assassin of Archons to know its location, after all.” 

“That’s too bad,” Sky says. “Still, worth looking into. If I’m meant to return with it, it may well turn out to be acquirable after all.”

Alma turns to Gwydion. “How will he return?”

“The same way he came.” Gwydion’s voice is confident. “Like Doria did. In examining his life force, I can see that this reality is pushing him out. It should take a little less than twenty-four hours for the passage to open again. This coming midnight.” Dion looks at Sky. “And you must be ready to leave by then. You are just similar enough for a biphasic effect, I think. If you don’t return to your reality at the proper moment, this reality will try to assimilate you instead.”

Sky nods, thoughtfully. “Then I will be in the chamber.”

“You will need to stay here,” Gwydion says. “The Bunnies–”

“Alma has already mentioned that,” Sky replies. “And it is clear from what Doria told me, as well. It’s too bad – I would like to meet them, and to explore this world more. But that doesn’t seem wise. And I still don’t know if there’s something I need to learn or acquire here. But perhaps I already have. Or your Sky has. You say his soul is damaged, and he cannot control his form well? I hope he is not getting into too much trouble there.”

“He is you.” Alma says, reaching out to touch his leather jacket sleeve, in an affectionate gesture that speaks of her developing trust. “Trust him. He’ll figure it out. Now, it may be three in the morning, but there is no time for sleep. Let’s get you caught up on everything you need to know regarding the state of the world.”