I unlock the door to my house and slip in. I sigh as I shut the door behind me. Finally, some privacy.

  I take off my shoes and walk further into the house. “So, this is my house.”

  For a moment, I’m anxious. The ghost is going to answer, right? The lighter-than-usual fossil is still in my backpack, right? I didn’t just have a psychotic break in the cave?

  “I see,” comes the answer, and the tension in my shoulders leaves. He’s real. Or… I don’t know. Could still be hallucinating.

  “You are not hallucinating.”

  “I told you not to read my thoughts,” I say, frowning.

  “I apologize.”

  I breathe in and out. “Well, anyway, let’s go to my room.”

  “Alright.”

  I climb up the stairs and make it to my room. Once I’ve shut the door, I take off my backpack. I almost throw it at the foot of the desk out of habit, but I realize that it would probably piss the ghost off, so I place the backpack down gently instead. I zip it open and lift out the rock, which is still light. Now that I know that’s where he lives, I feel like he’s staring at me. Regardless, I place him on my bed and sit next to him.

  “This is my room,” I say, looking around. I quickly become self-conscious about all the dinosaur posters. “Sorry it looks like a little boy’s room. I haven’t really given a shit about redecorating since no one ever visits.” I frown in thought. “Do you actually know what dinosaurs are?”

  “I do. I have seen them firsthand.”

  I raise a brow. “So you’re saying that you’re not only thousands of years old, but millions?”

  “More than that.”

  “Really? When were you born, then?”

  “I was never born. I have always existed.”

  “Right,” I scoff. “Nah, you’re not tricking me.”

  “You do not have to believe it.”

  “Alright. I won’t.”

  We sit in silence for a moment until he speaks again.

  “What is your family like?”

  “My family? Well…” I sigh. ”There’s my mom. She’s not here a lot of the time because we don’t get along. Then I guess there’s Isaac, her boyfriend. He might become my stepdad. Then there’s Isaac’s son, Abe. If my mom marries Isaac, I guess we’re gonna be brothers.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “Well… Isaac’s been civil with me the few times that I’ve met him. Abe has been… pushy. I don’t think he has a lot of friends, so he’s trying extra hard to be friends with me. I’ve tried to show him I’m not interested, though.” I lean back and let my eyes wander around the room. “If he becomes my brother… he’s probably gonna get more annoying. Or maybe he’ll reach a point where he realizes it’s not gonna work out between us. I don’t know.”

  The ghost is silent.

  I look over to the fossil. “You think I should be nicer to him, don’t you?”

  “Not particularly. He sounds unlike you.”

  “He definitely is. He’s… meek. I think that’s the word.”

  “He is weak.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I say, “but… yeah, I guess so. He seems pretty sensitive, and he’s kind of a runt.” After a pause, I lean forward. “What’s your family like?” I ask, even though I know it’s probably going to be all lies again.

  “As a primordial god, I do not have biological relatives,” he begins, ”but I have likened my counterpart and the Third Being to brothers before when describing my origins to my subjects.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I had better explain things from the beginning,” he says. “As mentioned, I am a primordial god. I existed before the world was created alongside my counterpart. Before time or space. We were… concepts. The concept of something and another something that was opposite to it. Then, the existence of two implied a third, and the Third Being was born.”

  “Wait. What do you mean by that? ‘The existence of two implied a third’?”

  “When given two options, it does not take long before a third one is sought.”

  “Sought by who?” This sounds like weapons-grade bullshit to me.

  “There was no active thinker. These concepts existed independently of thought.”

  “But then how --”

  “Perhaps it is better if you do not try to understand it. Your brain is built for comprehending this reality rather than the state of things before it.”

  “I think you’re just making things up.”

  “You can think what you want. I shall not be offended.”

  I shake my head. “Fine. Continue your story. Or is there more mindfuckery that I won’t be able to understand?”

  “Only a little.”

  I shrug. “Go for it, then.”

  “As mentioned, the Third Being was born of an implication brought forth by the existence of my counterpart and I. However, unlike us, he was not perfect. His nature was that of something in between, not total - and this made him unfit to exist in our world of absolutes. To avoid the logical contradiction, a reality came into being.”

  Came into being… so he’s saying it wasn’t created. It just… happened. But still for a reason.

  “It transformed us all, leaving us with the ability to experience. My counterpart and I did not understand our new way of being, but the Third Being’s imperfection seemed to let him comprehend it - and not just that, but to shape it. He created various things: time, space, energy, matter, stars, planets, water, life. New souls were formed. They propagated, growing more and more numerous while we watched, still unable to understand. It was not until eons later that it occurred to us that we could create our own corporeal forms.”

  It really took that long for them to figure it out? If I was telling the story, I’d make myself sound smarter.

  “We awoke as simple creatures of the sea. At first, we could not think. We lived and we died and found ourselves back in incorporeality. We tried again, perhaps a little differently, but ended up the same. We tried thousands, millions, countless more times until we learned to think. And when we could think, we could improve ourselves. Evolve. Eventually, we became titans. We saw each other, recognized each other, and fought.”

  Kaiju fight? Awesome.

  “We brought with us storms and earthquakes, lightning and lava, and trampled at our feet creatures as intelligent as you humans. These creatures, quadrupedal in form and covered in white fur, were worshippers of the Third Being, and important to the Third Being in return. Their destruction angered the Third Being, who wanted to eradicate us in vengeance, but he could not find a way to remove such fundamental beings as such. He attempted many things - destroying our bodies, dividing our souls into smaller and smaller pieces, and the destruction of all in reality except for his favorite priest - but we remained. In the end, he settled for scattering our souls across millions of members of the species we first used to be, knowing that it was only a matter of time before we gathered ourselves again, but knowing also that he could always scatter us again as well.”

  “Okay.” Hell of a story. “So I’m guessing you’ve ‘gathered’ yourself by now. Why hasn’t he ‘scattered’ you yet?”

  “One reason he has not scattered my counterpart yet is because my counterpart seemed to have no interest in gathering himself again. He remains as the global population of the creatures known to you as horseshoe crabs.”

  “Got it. Crabs. And what was the reason for the Third Being not scattering you?”

  ”The destruction of the Third Being’s subjects changed him in some way that remains ambiguous to me. He began… disappearing outside this reality at will and returning after some time. In his absence, he had that priest of his take on the powers of a god and watch over and develop the world. With time, the Third Being’s disappearances grew in duration… until his last disappearance, which is still ongoing. He was last seen over ten thousand years ago.”

  “Did he say he was going out for smokes?”

  “You must be attempting a joke. I should inform you that I do not experience humor.”

  “Okay.” Tough crowd.

  “I should let you know that I believe the Third Being’s priest to be… Arukei.”

  I give him a tired look. “Arukei. Really?”

  “From what I saw in people’s thoughts back at the cave, it appears that Arukei’s religion is a very close match with the religion of the Third Being’s subjects. Arukei is also a quadruped with a white coat, like the subjects were.”

  “Yeah, but Arukei’s a mountain goat,” I say. “He’s not some kind of… alien.”

  ”It is understandable for him to want to take on a form more familiar to humans. I have done it many times myself.”

  “I guess that’s fair.” I cross my arms and sigh. “Wow. That’s… that’s a lot.”

  “There is even more.”

  “There is?” I think I dread it.

  “I did not mention my kingdom.”

  “Oh, right. That thing.” I pause. “Maybe you could tell me about that some other time. I think I should get to my homework.”

  “That is alright. I did not want to tell the story of my kingdom quite yet either way," the ghost says. "As for your homework… may I watch as you do it?”

  “Sure, why not.” I get off the bed, pick up the fossil - still light - and place it on my desk in a vacant spot. I take out the book of the first subject of the day, which is history.

  “Which subject is that?” the ghost asks.

  “History,” I say, holding up the book so he can see.

  “You do not need to show things to me in that way. I can sense anything within a certain range, whether it is facing me or not.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I lower the book. “I was kind of wondering how you were able to see without eyes.”

  “It is a kind of reality-sense. I can ‘see’ things on even a subatomic scale.”

  “Oh, wow.” That’s impressive. “Is that how you can read thoughts, too?”

  “I could follow the electric potentials in your brain to trace your thoughts, yes, but I find it more efficient to do it the way certain ghosts do.”

  I smirk. “So how are you not a ghost, again?”

  “You can consider me a type of ghost if you want. I shall no longer argue.”

  “Alright.” It’s not fun if he isn’t annoyed, though. Hmm. “Actually, maybe I should know your name. Do you have one?”

  “Originally, I had no name, but I gave myself one to use when I began speaking to humans. It was not in your language, however. I believe you should instead call me ‘Spiral’… no, ‘Helix’. Call me ‘Helix’.”

  “Helix,” I repeat. “Got it. I’m Red.” Well, I’m Ichiro, but I don’t want to tell him my real name yet.

  “I overheard that before at the cave, yes.”

  I nod. As he stays silent after that, I open the history book and take out the notebook inside it.

  “What does your book say?”

  I look at the fossil. “Oh, you can’t read it?”

  “I am able to read some of your language,” he says, “but only as much as I was able to learn from reading the minds of the visitors of the cave. My knowledge is quite… patchy.”

  “Okay. Makes sense.” I turn to the book. “Well… right now, it’s about the Middle Ages in Borea. Saikarian monasteries and stuff.”

  “What were they like?”

  “Uh… do you know what the Saikarian religion is like?”

  “I do not believe so. These Saikarians must have been too far away from my kingdom for me to cross paths with them. That, or they only emerged later.”

  “I mean, I think they’ve taught us before that Saikar used to just be one of the gods of some earlier religion until people really started worshipping him much more than other members of the pantheon, like, over a thousand years ago.”

  “Then it is reasonable for me not to know of them.” He pauses. “Could you tell me more about history as a whole? I have much to catch up on after I sealed myself in that cave, and I would also like to know how the times I was present for are seen by modern civilization.”

  “Uhh…” That’s a lot of material. Then again… “Might as well. Though, again, I’d like to get my homework done first.”

  “Very well.”

  I return to my book and start reading.

  After my homework, I briefly went downstairs to get something to eat - I’d forgotten to do it before - and then returned to my room. I took out my seventh grade history book as it began from the earliest point, prehistory, and read out the main points to Helix. He agreed that it seemed consistent with what he’d seen up until about 4,000 years ago when he said he’d founded his kingdom. He saw that the book seemed not to mention this kingdom, and he told me that he had a good guess as to why, but when I asked him about it, he said he’d already told me enough about his past for the day and that he’d only get into it tomorrow and later. I shrugged. I could wait.

  Eventually I got tired and said I wanted to watch some TV. He asked me what it was and I explained as best as I could, which wasn’t very well. I took him downstairs with me and turned on the TV and watched the crap on it that I usually do to pass the time and numb my mind. Helix mentioned to me that he found it quite informative, but I was quick to let him know that TV isn’t always accurate to life. He maintained that it still revealed things about our culture, and I couldn’t argue with that.

  Once night came, I hid him in my closet before going to bed. I didn’t want to risk my mother coming home unexpectedly and finding him. She would have absolutely accused me of stealing the fossil from somewhere and tried to get in touch with the cave about it or something.

  In bed, I replayed the day’s events. It started feeling strange to me that I’d brought Helix into my house just like that, but not so strange that I was worried. I supposed I was just jumping at the chance to have someone listen to me for once. And I think I’d made the right choice. He was pretty interesting to hang out with.

  The next morning, I left Helix alone at the house as I left for school. The day came and went pretty normally, though I was relieved that Seiichi or his friends didn’t bother me. I didn’t know if it had anything to do with the encounter at the cave yesterday or if I was just lucky that day. I didn’t question it too hard.

  I returned home to Helix after school. He asked me how school was and I told him it’d been fine. I did my homework while he watched and occasionally asked some questions, which I answered to the best of my ability. After I was done, I went to eat a microwavable pizza downstairs. I just finished it, and now I’m entering my room again.

  “Welcome back,” Helix says.

  “Hey yourself,” I respond as I close the door behind me and lock it. I’ve found that locking the door brings me a much better sense of safety than the plan of hiding the fossil if my mom were to come over. Actually, it’s been three days since she last was here. I think she’s coming again today. I hope she won’t be a bitch again.

  “What are you thinking about?” Helix asks.

  Right. I suppose I did just space out a bit. “Nothing important,” I say. “So… did you want to tell me about your kingdom today?”

  Yesterday, I didn’t really care that much, but now I’ve come to realize that his stories are pretty interesting. I still don’t know if any of them can be trusted, but that doesn’t really bother me. An interesting story is interesting regardless of whether it actually happened.

  “Indeed I did,” Helix replies. “However, I believe I can do better than simply recount events to you. I can let you meet the kingdom’s most important man.”

  “Huh?” I tilt my head. “Is he… still alive?” I think about the skeleton in the cave. He’s not gonna take me back to see that corpse again, is he?

  “No, he is long gone,” Helix says. “But I can show you an interactive vision where he is still alive.”

  “Vision…?”

  I scratch my cheek. I know that ghosts are able to show people illusions. So this guy, ghost or god or whatever he is, can probably do something similar. But is it… safe? Could it fuck up my brain?

  “You seem hesitant, and I understand why,” he says, “but I assure you that it is safe. I have done it countless times before. And even if I were to somehow cause your brain damage, which I am too careful to do, I could repair it. Thanks to my reality-sense and centuries of research, I am well acquainted with the human brain.”

  He… sounds convincing. But I don’t know…

  “Think about it this way. I use telepathy and create visions through the same mechanism ghosts do. If ghosts caused some kind of brain damage when they did those things, would it not have been detected by now? Would humanity not shun ghosts even more than they do already?”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “...I guess you’re right,” I say.

  ”I also have a reason to be careful with you. You are the best candidate for carrying on my legacy that I have met so far. I would not throw away this opportunity by carelessly tinkering with your precious organs.”

  Kind of a creepy thing to say, but it makes sense. “Fine,” I sigh. “You can show me a vision. But it can’t be longer than fifteen minutes, and you have to end the vision immediately if I ever ask you to.”

  “Your terms are agreeable,” he says. “Now, go lie down on your bed. It is easier for you to remain stationary without hurting yourself that way.”

  Sounds sensible to me. I climb into my bed, facing the ceiling.

  “One more thing,” Helix says. ”In order to make the vision interactive, you will have to temporarily allow me to read your mind. Otherwise, you will not be able to control your body in the vision, and you will not be able to tell me to stop the vision. That would be highly distressing for you. Will you allow me to read your mind during the vision?”

  Oh, wow. Being stuck in an unmoving body sounds horrifying. I guess I really have to let him see into my mind in order to do this…

  “Alright,” I finally say. I don’t really have anything to hide from him. Or, wait… “No. Actually, I want to ask you something first.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you… do you judge people based on their sexual preferences?”

  “Is this about your homosexuality?”

  I flinch and quiet. Gods, how does he know? Did he… right. He was reading my mind back at the cave before I told him to stop. He must have found that out there.

  “I assure you, Red, a mortal child’s sexual orientation could not matter to me any less.”

  I sigh in relief. Though I’m not happy to be called a ‘mortal child’, even if that’s technically what I am.

  “May I start the vision now?”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  I wait for the vision to begin, not really sure what’s to come. Second thoughts arise, but I suppress them. I don’t want to look like a pussy here. I’ll just handle whatever comes.

  The room around me begins to darken, but my bed and body remain lit normally. Once my surroundings have become black, I notice myself tilting - the head of the bed is rising. The angle increases until I slide down to the foot of the bed and step off. I take a few more steps and turn around, but the bed is gone. I’m standing in the black void. The floor beneath my socks seems smooth and hard.

  It begins to light up. It’s yellow stone. First it’s just the area underneath me, but it spreads outwards. Then it climbs up walls, revealing great murals of people and animals rendered in some sort of ancient style as well as tall glassless windows. Pillars rise from the floor and reach the just-formed ceiling at at least three meters’ height. There’s a pair of large doors at the end of the room. I turn around to see what’s behind me, and it strikes me that I was facing the wrong way.

  A few steps up from the floor, there’s a gold-and-red throne and a golden stand beside it. On the throne sits a tall, muscular man. He is bronze-skinned with short, curly, dark brown hair and a well-trimmed beard. His eyes, though, are unlike anything I’ve ever seen - a wild, striking yellow. His gaze seems to pierce me, but he actually only seems... intrigued.

  He wears a garment of white cloth which reaches from his left shoulder to his feet. Part of his chest is visible, revealing his carpet of body hair and the utter size of his pectorals. Golden jewelry adorns his wrists, neck and ears, complementing the crown resting on his head. There are sandals on his feet, and somehow even they seem royal.

  This must be the guy Helix wanted me to meet. I can tell that he’s a king. But did he actually look like this back then? This guy is so unbelievably sexy that it’s a miracle I’m not getting a chub. Maybe Helix is preventing it so that I can keep my dignity.

  Okay, I better look elsewhere. I look at the golden stand. It’s like a pillar adorned with carvings with a platform on the top, and on the platform sits an… ammonite? A greater blue ammonite, it looks like. Don’t those need to be in water to survive?

  “I am a god, remember?”

  Helix’s voice. That’s Helix? I mean, yeah, I guess so if he was in an ammonite fossil before, so being an ammonite now makes sense… though I don’t think a few millennia is long enough for a fossil to form. There must be another story behind it.

  “You must be Red,” the man speaks. His voice is deep and masculine, just like Helix’s, but he speaks more loudly, with more emotion. I catch a glimpse of his canine teeth, which look larger and more pointed than normal. Weird, but kind of cool. “I am Kohath, King of the Helixians.”

  Helixians. Must be another localization of sorts for Helix to translate them like that. I’m assuming this guy is being translated - he clearly comes from a totally different part of the world from me, and a different era at that.

  I realize that I’m being rude. “It’s… a pleasure to meet you, sir,” I say. I think about bowing since I think you’re supposed to bow in front of royals, but then realize that it could just as well be a highly offensive gesture here. I’ll just lean into my fish-out-of-water status here and not do anything. Helix would tell me if I absolutely needed to do something, right?

  Kohath smiles, amused. I feel my insides squirm. This guy has no right to be this fucking hot, Gods!

  “Is this truly the heir to our kingdom?” he asks, turning to Helix. “He is but a child - a scrawny one at that.”

  Feeling insecure, I fold my arms. Being dissed by an ancient king from a totally different part of the world wasn’t among the things I thought would happen today.

  “Do you forget?” Helix says, now in the physical space rather than inside my head. I don’t know how he’s doing that without a human mouth. “You were once the same.”

  Kohath’s brows rise, then lower. He huffs and turns back to me. “Tell me. From where do you hail?”

  “Uh… Hojo, sir.”

  “Where is it located?”

  “It’s…” How do you answer that question? Give the coordinates? “Far from here.” I’m assuming. Helix never said where his kingdom was, but this guy looks like he’s from around, like, Kounia or something.

  He leans forward. “Hm. What kind of place is it?”

  “Well…” I look out of the window. There’s a city of mudbrick buildings. Ancient Kounia is seeming more likely. “It’s colder there. The winter gets a lot of snow.” Do they get snow here?

  “How much?”

  Another question I don’t really know how to answer. “Sometimes there’s a blizzard -- a snowstorm, and there can be…” I raise my forearm and run my finger across it. “This much more on the ground in one night.”

  He looks surprised. “I see. It must be very cold.”

  “It’s still warm in the summer,” I say. “But probably not as warm as here. Where is this, exactly?”

  “This is the Helixian Kingdom, of course,” Kohath says, spreading his arms and leaning back. “In the Aava region. Unless it is named differently in your time?”

  “No, Aava’s familiar,” I say. Ancient Kounia it was, then. “So… you know I’m from a different time.”

  “My master has explained to me that you are four thousand years from the future, from a time when the Helixian Kingdom is no more.” He shakes his head. “It is tragic to hear that this kingdom will eventually fall. But my master has always been honest - that it was always a possibility.”

  Master. I look at Helix. His strange yellow eyes with those strange squiggly pupils. He did talk about this kingdom as being his. He must have been its true leader. What did that make Kohath? Just a figurehead?

  “There are many questions I would like to ask you,” Kohath continues, “but that is not the purpose of our meeting. My master wishes for me to recount my past to you. That is, then, what I shall do.”

  Helix raises a tentacle. A shadow forms in front of me, rising from the floor, taking the shape of something thin and straight ending in a large sphere. It lights up like the room had done before, revealing a golden stand holding up a transparent crystal ball.

  “A visual aid,” Helix clarifies. “I can show you images of the past while Kohath describes it.”

  Kohath hums. “Convenient.”

  “I have always valued efficiency. Now, please, do begin.”

  Kohath nods, then clears his throat. “I should begin from my childhood - when I was fifteen.” Same age as I am, now. “I was a slave. I lived in a town by the sea, owned by a sailor’s family. They did not… treat me well.”

  The crystal ball lights up and displays a scene.

  A bony teenage boy, bronze-skinned and brown-haired, is curled up on the ground, being kicked by a man of the same ethnicity but heavier and more well clothed. I’m not disturbed by it, but it seems like Kohath is, and I can understand why. This can’t be nice for him to relive.

  “Regardless…” he continues. The crystal ball changes to the scene of a sea shore and illustrates Kohath’s story as he speaks. ”Every now and then, I was tasked with washing their clothes in the sea. One such day, I saw a greater blue ammonite stranded on the rocks of the shore. Busy with my work, I did not intervene at first, but then he called out to me.

  “’Boy!’ he shouted. I was greatly surprised, as I imagine you would be, too, were you to see a wild animal speak to you in your tongue. He then told me that he was no ordinary ammonite, that he could speak and survive on land, but that he had gotten stuck on the rocks and was drying out. He promised that would repay me well were I to help him. I, then, set down my washing basket and carried him to the water.”

  Kohath is smiling again now. I’m glad he’s having a better time, but myself, I have to wonder why Helix couldn’t have just levitated himself back into the sea if he was so powerful. Did he do all this as some kind of test for Kohath?

  ”Once he had been rehydrated, he thanked me and asked for my name, which I gave to him. He gave me his name in return - Helix. He told me he was a being of great power, and that he would help me by making him strong so that I could stand up to my masters.”

  Kohath shakes his head, still smiling. “But I could not believe him. My masters had beaten me so many times that I could not fathom the possibility of defying them. I told Helix this, but he told me it was something he could also mend, given time. As I still did not believe him, he asked me to present my hands to him, which I did. He laid his tentacles on them and used his power to heal my calluses. I was amazed, but he told me that it was but a small miracle and that he could perform much greater acts. When I asked him what they were, he told me I would see in due time. He told me that I should do my laundry for now and return home, but that when it was time for me to return to the sea, I should call out his name and he would appear. I nodded and said he had my word.”

  I continue to watch the crystal ball as it shows the greater blue ammonite recede into the water and swim away.

  Huh. Helix reached out to Kohath the way he reached out to me. I suppose not much changes in four thousand years after all.

  “Eventually, I finished washing my clothes and returned to my master’s dwelling. I recall not what I experienced on the rest of that day, as Helix was not there to see it and discuss it with me later, and the same went for the next few days until it was time for me to do laundry again. I remember that my master had beaten me again that day, quite badly, for no particular reason. Regardless, I returned to the sea, carrying my basket of clothes.”

  During the words he spoke of his master, he frowned. I can imagine why. Or maybe I can’t. I’ve been beat up, but I’ve never been beat up as badly as that boy in the crystal ball looks right now, let alone by someone who literally owned me.

  “I called out to Helix, and he emerged from the water right away, as if he’d known the very moment I would return. He saw my bruises and asked about them, and I explained to him what had happened. He asked me if I was angry, and I said that my feelings didn’t matter, as they would not change a thing.”

  He felt helpless. Like there was nothing in the future but pain. It reminds me of how I’ve been feeling, though I suppose I still have it better. Even in juvie, I’d at least get the proper amount of food.

  “He asked me if I wanted him to heal my bruises, but I knew that my master would simply take it as an excuse to beat me again. I explained this, and Helix understood. Then he asked me to present my hands to him for a different reason. As I did so, a cooked fish appeared in my grasp. I looked at him in awe, and he told me it was mine to consume. I ate it gratefully. It was the first good meal I had had in years.”

  He looks at Helix with a grateful smile on his face. It’s like Helix is his savior. He probably was, to be honest.

  Kohath looks back to me. “Afterwards, Helix told me that he would feed me any time I was hungry as long as I did something for him in return. He wanted me to become his pupil, someone he would train. I agreed to his proposal.”

  I think I would have done the same thing. Anything to keep myself fed.

  ”It was only the next time we met that we began training. Helix showed me illusory opponents and gave me a dagger to attack with. I was near helpless at first, but with time, I learned how and when to strike. Nourished by the food he gave me and further helped by the vitality he bestowed upon me, my health improved, allowing for growth of muscle and height. In a few months’ time, I was almost a different boy entirely - taller, bulkier, more confident.” He smirked. “And best of all, I had gained the courage needed to take on those that had wronged me.”

  The boy in the crystal ball indeed looks different now - an entire head taller. That looks like a lot of growth for just a few months. Does that just happen if you get access to food after being malnourished for so long, or did Helix help it through another way, like by manipulating his hormones?

  ”Then came the day when Helix decided I was finally ready. He told me the plan, and I carried him to my master’s house. Helix created for me a knife, and I left him outside while I slipped in. Hiding the knife behind my back, and made my way to my master’s wife in the kitchen - the witch who had always cheered her husband on when he’d beaten me.”

  Wait. Is he really going to…

  “And I slit her throat.”

  The crystal ball censors nothing. The blade cuts into the woman’s neck and slices the flesh, freeing the blood inside. Shock and terror take over her face as she reaches for her neck too late. Then she collapses.

  Huh.

  “Oh?” Kohath leans in. “This does not seem to disturb you.”

  I look back up at him. “Well… I’ve seen things like this before.”

  “You have witnessed the killing of other humans?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I just mean…” How do you get across the concept of TV to someone from the Bronze Age?

  I shall explain it for him, Helix’s voice says telepathically. He turns to Kohath, and Kohath turns to him, and after a moment, Kohath hums.

  “The distant future must truly be wondrous,” he says, turning back to me. “This does, however, mean that you do not know what it is like to witness violent death firsthand.”

  I tilt my head. “Isn’t that… a good thing?”

  “Hmph. Perhaps if one wishes to stay weak.”

  Weak? I don’t appreciate the implication that I’m weak. I give Helix a look.

  You are not weak, he reassures me. Kohath simply does not know you.

  Alright then.

  “I shall return to my story,” Kohath announces, and the image that has paused in the crystal ball begins moving again. “After my master’s wife, I sought out my master himself. He was in his bed, sleeping off his drunkenness. I watched as he breathed. Even then, I felt fear. But I remembered the faith Helix had put in me, and I found the strength to plunge the knife into his neck.”

  The man, fat and bearded, opens his eyes and mouth. The crystal ball is silent, but I can imagine the gargling he must have been making. After a moment, he goes slack. The crystal ball shows Kohath’s face. His face is blank at first. Then a smile creeps on his lips. Then it becomes a grin.

  Well, I’m glad he’s having fun.

  “After I had killed my master,” Kohath continues, “I exchanged my bloody clothes for clean ones and packed a large bag with money and supplies. I exited the house and greeted Helix, telling him how good I felt. He reminded me that we were in a hurry, and I put my glee aside for long enough to pack Helix into the bag and make my escape.”

  The crystal ball shows Kohath paying for a wagon ride. The scenery changes a few times, but he’s always travelling.

  ”With the money I had stolen, and with the occasional disguise provided by Helix’s illusions, I was able to leave the city and disappear deep into the wild,” Kohath explains. ”We settled in a cave. Helix taught me how to make fire, how to construct tools and weapons, how to hunt and gather. I was eager to learn, and he learned quickly. I grew even taller and more muscular, approaching the ideal physique. As a sign of my loyalty to Helix, he changed my eyes from dark brown to yellow and enlarged my canines to give me the visage of a mighty predator.”

  Oh, huh. That explains why Kohath didn’t have those in the prior footage. I don’t really get why Kohath needed those changes, but maybe it was a branding thing or something. Looks pretty cool, anyway. Though the Kohath in the crystal ball right now doesn’t look as good as the one that’s sitting on the throne - Past Kohath has long, shaggy hair and a beard to match while Current Kohath is groomed to perfection. I guess there’s a long way to go until we reach the time this vision is modeled after.

  ”Sometimes, travellers passed by. Some were peaceful. Others had heard the rumors. The rumors of a slave that had killed his masters, fled to the wild and become some manner of beastman there. They sought to capture me, dead or alive. None of them succeeded, as my strength was superior and I had the assistance of Helix. Later on, I also had Tsayedet, a wolf I had raised from a cub, to fend off my enemies.”

  Kohath’s tone changed at the end, as if he was talking about a dear companion. It does seem like he and the wolf were close, given the imagery of Kohath petting the wolf and letting it curl up next to him at night.

  ”Then, one day, I asked Helix who he really was. I had asked this before, but he had not revealed his true nature, as he did not expect me to believe him. This time, however, he told me of the very beginning of the world and how he was there before it had even happened. I believed him, but what I did not understand was why he was spending my time with a lowly mortal like me.”

  That’s what I wanna know, too.

  ”He told me that he wanted to understand the world.”

  Understand?

  ”He wanted, in his words, to know the laws of reality. That his lack of knowledge bothered him. That, as a god, there should be nothing he was unaware of.”

  I guess that makes sense. But… how did hanging out with some guy help him understand the world?

  “I could not understand back then how spending time with me brought him closer to this goal, but he assured me that it would become apparent with time.”

  That’s eerie. Why couldn’t he just tell him directly?

  Kohath opens his mouth to continue, but Helix raises a tentacle.

  “What is it, master?” Kohath asks.

  “Red,” Helix begins, “someone is approaching your house back home. I presume it is your mother. Would you like to continue this session, or would you like to wake up now and resume later?”

  Ugh. Mom. I sigh. “I guess I should wake up. See if she wants anything.”

  “It shall be done. Please, do not rush to get up.”

  Rush to get up…?

  As I snap back to my bed in my room, I understand quickly what he was trying to say. The whiplash is definitely something. Once I recover, I get up and go downstairs. Mom’s just entered the house. She looks angry.

  I sigh. “What?”

  Mom kicks off her shoes and hangs her coat on the hook. “Your field trip.”

  “Yeah?” I have a feeling I know what she’s gonna say.

  “Was it fun for you?” She stares into my eyes. “Making everyone worry?”

  I take a long blink. I could tell her that I just got lost, but I already know she’s not going to believe me.

  She crosses her arms. “Well?”

  “Does it matter?” I ask. “Does it matter to you how I feel?”

  She sneers with a huff. She walks past me into the kitchen. Is she going to…? Yep. Straight for the wine cabinet.

  She picks out a bottle of red. “It’s all just a game to you.”

  It’s not. Hasn’t been for years.

  “It’s always been a game to you,” she continues, picking out a glass and making her way to the living room couch. “The first moment you found out you could fuck with people, you started, and you haven’t stopped since.”

  I stopped when I was eleven.

  “And I’m the one who has to deal with it.” She pours herself a glass. “Clean up all your fucking messes. Get called a terrible mother for not disciplining my son. Well, I’ve fucking tried. It just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because you’re fucked in the head.“

  This speech again, huh. So predictable. And yet it still bothers me. Her words hurt even though they have no meaning.

  Mom turns around. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

  Before I can think of something to say, she looks at my hands. She notices that they’re in fists.

  “And now you’re getting angry,” she says, turning back to her fucking booze and taking a sip. “Like you’re being wronged here. Like you don’t deserve to be told these things. Well, Red, you do deserve it. You’ve brought it on yourself.”

  I feel like yelling at her. I feel like calling her a bitch. But that’s not going to solve anything, is it. I should just leave.

  I take a deep breath as she drinks some more. “I’m going back upstairs,” I finally get out. “I’ll be doing my homework. Don’t bother me.”

  She lowers her glass to laugh. “Homework? You don’t do homework, Red, you get someone else to do it. You just jack off.”

  Alright. Whatever keeps her away from me.

  In silence, I go back upstairs and into my room. I strain to close the door without slamming it and lock it. I lean my head against it and close my eyes.

  After a while, I speak up. “Did you see all that?”

  ”I did,” Helix responds. “I am sorry.”

  I sigh. “No, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “Do not worry about me. I have seen things more violent.”

  He has, hasn’t he. I make my way from the door to the bed and lie back down.

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “I don’t know. I just…” I touch my forehead. “It’s so unfair. Like, I know I’ve fucked up in the past. I still fuck up. But I don’t do it on purpose anymore. I just can’t help it. My mom should believe me when I tell her that, but she thinks I’m just spinning some shit again. How much time needs to pass before she’ll give me another chance?”

  ”Hmm.” He pauses. ”Do you want to know?”

  “You’d know something like that?”

  ”I took the liberty of reading her mind. I hope that does not bother you.

  “I couldn’t give any less of a fuck,” I mutter. “So… yeah, I want to know. How much time?”

  He pauses again. “She is never going to give you another chance.”

  I have to stop and take it in for a while.

  She’s never going to give me another chance.

  No one is going to stand up for me.

  ”Red?”

  I’m too numb to answer.

  ”I am sorry. I should not have told you.”

  It takes a while, but I do eventually respond. “It’s okay. You did make sure I wanted to hear it.”

  Silence returns to the room and lingers for a few minutes.

  “You should take the rest of the day off,” Helix says. “We can finish the vision tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.” I sigh. “Let’s do that.”

  I think I’m just gonna keep lying here, honestly. I can’t watch TV with Turbobitch downstairs.

  ”Red.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I want you to know that if you ever need to talk, I am here.”

  I turn my head to the fossil on my desk and stare for a moment.

  He… listens to me.

  He supports me.

  It might just be because I’m the main candidate for carrying on his legacy… but it’s still something. Much better than the nothing I had before.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  It feels like he’s nodding.

  I take a deep breath in and let it out. I nestle into a more comfortable position and close my eyes. As I replay the events of the day so far - my day at school, reading books with Helix, the vision with Kohath, the argument with Mom - I eventually begin to drift off…

  Whelp) needed to have 37k of written material removed due to Red being too out of character and his transformation into a murderer being tricky to execute. However, I have since managed to make up for that lost progress and more, and Whelp is finished. It is five parts long in total, including the one part posted before and this part I've posted now. I will be uploading the rest at a steady schedule of once a week starting from now.

  The Bringer) will take longer than initially stated to start uploading here. I have realized that the current WIP just doesn't really work and it needs a reboot. There are also, naturally, plenty of things going on in my life that are slowing the process down. Once I finish the first draft of The Bringer, though, and then possible subsequent drafts until I'm at a point where it'll take me at most slight revisions before the chapters are ready for uploading here, I'll start posting, likely with the original once-in-two-weeks schedule.

  Thank you for your patience, and thank you for reading. I hope you'll enjoy what's to come.