Ki had grown silent once more.
“Are you ok?” Grant asked gently.
Ki glanced at him, then away. “I will be,” he said quietly. “I apologise again. I had forgotten… being in this space, in your mind, it makes my memories sharper, easier to recall in detail. The benefits of having physical channels with which to process memories are substantial, but in this case they are becoming a detriment. I had not expected that I would still feel such strong emotions at events so ancient. The shame of my early years on Earth, the loss of Isaiah, meeting Imhotep… they still feel fresh, here.”
“Is that why you can’t remember everything that happened before you arrived on Earth?” Grant asked. “Because your memories are harder to recall when you don’t have a body.”
“Indeed,” Ki said, still reminiscing.
Grant studied him for a moment. “Come on,” he said, getting up from the table. “Let’s walk around. I wanna explore my mind.”
They left the dining table, wandering through the construct of Grant’s former home. Every time they entered a room, Grant was flooded by a wave of forgotten memories, some bad, some good, but all fresh and sharp as if they had only just occurred. The rush of negative emotions attached to some of those memories made him far more understanding of Ki’s pain although getting teased by classmates was hardly comparable to being responsible for death, torture and mutilation.
They walked in a comfortable silence, Grant happy to give Ki the time needed to gather himself as it gave him time to think more on what he had learned. His beliefs had been toyed with quite thoroughly over the past hour or two. Accepting that aliens had masqueraded as gods had thrown him, but he had seen enough magic over the one day since he arrived that he had been prepared for such revelations, in a way. That said, he had a notion he would be feeling much more strongly about the shift in paradigms had he learned that the Earth was made in seven days, or that humanity had been created out of thin air. Grant had always been a proud realist, scoffing at the notion of magic, fairies, God or gods, souls, all the magical beliefs that filled Earth. Until Ki had mentioned Magi, but Grant had taken solace in his assumption that while those things did exist, they existed only in the new world he had found himself in, and only to these few dozen beings possessed of a Source. But Ki’s recounting of meeting Imhotep and realising he was a human with powers had thrown all that comfort out of the window. If humans could use magic, he had to assume that there were people on Earth, currently, living amongst them, that could and did use magic of their own. For some reason, the knowledge that he had been transported to a magical world was far less disturbing than the idea that sorcerers and magicians had existed on Earth for his entire life.
Grant mentally shook himself. No time to wallow in the fact that everything you’ve known and believed is wrong, he thought, but just keep focusing on the positive - magic exists, and you can use it. That’s fucking awesome.
As they dwelled on their respective thoughts, the pair of them had wandered, by unspoken agreement, out of Grant’s childhood home, and made their way to the next house, the one he had moved to as a teen. Pausing before going in, Grant felt a pang of pain, looking up at the red bricks and familiar wooden door. While he had come to terms with his parent’s deaths, it was as Ki had said earlier - being in this place, this mental space, made the memory of their loss as fresh as if it had just happened.
Grant opened the door, and they walked in. Moving through the environment and experiencing more memories seemed to help Ki, as he began to emerge from his inner thoughts and looked around the place with Grant. The pair of them smiled as they wandered through the house, the love and warmth that Grant had been lucky enough to experience throughout his childhood reflected in the countless memories that they found themselves recalling.
“Thank you,” Ki said, “for allowing me my self-indulgence. But, our time is limited, and I would like to continue, if you would permit me.”
“Of course,” said Grant, “I’m eager to learn more. It’s startling, to say the least, and I can’t promise my sanity won’t collapse if there are more massive, earth-shattering revelations, but go on.”
Ki chuckled. “I think the worst is behind us, in that sense. Not only the worst of the atrocities, but also the hidden history of your world. Now, the story turns more to our present circumstances. To the creation of this world. The Vault, as we call it.
“After meeting Imhotep, everything changed. The revelation that humanity could wield power turned everything on its head, and all the plans I had at the time had to be thrown out and remade completely. It was not a simple matter to convince him to defect - as I said, he was a priest at the time we met, and while he was unaware of the truth behind his god, he was quite loyal. But the vices of Ra were not easily hidden, and once I opened his eyes, his immense loyalty and faith quickly turned into conviction. While I will not tell exactly what occurred, suffice to say that it horrified him immensely, and he was determined to ensure that no one else would have to go through what he did, and stop the Numen. His determination was a detriment at first, as he was almost too eager to act, but as I said, he was wise beyond his years, and quickly realised that our goal would not be accomplished in weeks or months, or even years, but decades or centuries. So Imhotep became my disciple, and I taught him for many years. Since he was the first human I had found capable of using magic, we spent many of our first years together experimenting, pushing the limits of his powers, and trying to discover ways this new weapon could be used to stop my former friends. The magic that humans can wield, while different from a host like yourself, is similar enough at its core that I could guide his development, until the day many centuries later where his powers diverged too greatly from mine to benefit from my teachings, and he became capable of feats that no Numen could replicate - although, similarly, we could perform acts no human could. But, in the beginning, his abilities were not so different from mine. However, those early years of experimenting were rewarded after less than a decade. The first spell we discovered that he could perform that I could not was the one that shaped the course of our campaign to the greatest extent - a spell that could locate other humans with magical abilities. To my knowledge, even once the other Numen became aware of humanity’s latent magical abilities, none of us were ever able to replicate that spell. It gave us a distinct advantage in those initial years - while there were very, very few people who could harness magic, with that spell we were able to track down almost everyone with the gift and bring them together, under one banner. Some were like Imhotep, faithful to their gods, but like in his case, it was not overly difficult to reveal the vile acts of those they worshipped, and they joined us readily enough.
“Unfortunately, and in spite of our many experiments, we never truly discovered what caused some people to be born with this gift. We did know for certain that it was linked to our presence on the planet though - somehow we had reshaped the world in such a way that our power began leaking into the very earth, imbuing people and animals at random with special abilities. Over the next few millennia there were several unique creatures born, mutated animals that grew to massive proportions, gifted with intelligence beyond even that of humanity, and in some cases, powers beyond even those of us gods - I have seen, looking through your memories, that legends still exist of such creatures. Luckily, in humans, the effects were more controlled and less… aesthetically obvious. And so, over the centuries, our numbers grew and grew. We were subtle at first, attempting to infiltrate the systems of the time and turn as many of the common folk to our side as we could. We knew that eventually the knowledge of magic users would be uncovered, so laying the foundation for a strong rebellion was essential. Unfortunately, while we saw some success, there were a few… bad apples, I think is your expression. It only takes one traitor to undermine the work of hundreds, and to my disappointment the promise of greed and power was strong enough to draw some of our allies to the side of the gods. Our first strike, the grand revelation of our rebellion, of the power of humanity, was torn to shreds by the foreknowledge given to the Numen by those traitors. So we retreated back into the shadows, battered and diminished, but more determined than even. After several more centuries we numbered dozens of solid, trusted men and women. As we gathered more acolytes to our cause, we continued to position spies in key locations, gathering information, carefully weaving their magic to protect citizens from the worst of the punishments doled out by the ruling Numen.
“Pleasantly, a lot of humans gifted with magic, though not all of them, turned out to be immortal. This was hugely beneficial, as this ensured that both our numbers and the power of our strongest would continue to rise over the years, allowing us to grow stronger and stronger. Over those first thousand years, we tried every strategy we could think of to banish the Numen, to subdue them, or to kill them - though that was always a last resort, as any direct conflict would almost always result in the deaths of countless numbers of bystanders. However, while we had numbers, each Magi was far weaker individually than any of the gods we faced by an insurmountable degree. But we did not give up. Even if we could not remove my kind from the planet, we could still make the lives of people as safe as possible, and we never stopped trying to come up with a plan. My visions still made it clear that we were on the right path, at last, to defeating them - and, after many centuries of dedicated effort, Imhotep discovered a solution. The Vault. A colossal undertaking, a spell more powerful than any we had conceived before, one that would require far more power than all the Magi we had at the time could conjure. As it transpired, the key to the spell's development was in my revelation to Imhotep about our origins, of our alien world and our journey into this universe, which I am sorry to say came only after centuries of our struggle. I hadn’t thought our origins to be relevant, as I was focused on Earth entirely by then, but he saw the answer in my story. If we came from another universe, he reasoned, there must be other universes outside of the two of ours. Something that I knew, of course, coming from a technologically advanced society, but sadly I never stopped to consider the ramifications of magic in light of my advanced knowledge. But Imhotep discovered, through the use of his magic, that he was correct. There were infinite universes, and infinite more being created every second of every day. From your memories, I see that your scientists have come to a similar conclusion recently, yes?” he added, glancing questioningly at Grant.
Grant nodded in response. “Yeah, I mean I’m not exactly a physicist, but alternate universes are a big trope in a lot of our media, and it is based in some kind of theory as far as I know. But I’m not an expert, I don’t know if it’s an actual theory or just the ramblings of sci-fi writers.”
“Well, regardless of what your scientists think, I can assure you that there is a… multiverse, seems to be the term you are most familiar with. Imhotep reasoned, quite simply, that if there is room in the multiverse for infinite universes, maybe we could add a new one to the array. A universe, created and shaped by us, with walls strengthened by magic, placed between your universe and the higher plane where our consciousnesses still resided. A universe that would act as both a trap, and a filter, for our consciousnesses. An audacious plan, and one that I never even considered, for it was a step beyond anything even the scientists of my home planet would ever have envisaged - but, with magic? A possibility, and a more effective plan than it first seems, even. You see, we are not truly a part of your reality. As I told you, when we arrived in this universe, we were in a… an in-between state, you could say. Confined to this universe, but also beyond it, able to travel as we wished, unaffected by even black holes, but unable to interact at all without humanity as a channel for our powers. We occupied a… pocket of your reality, may be the easiest way to explain it, and all that we did we did by sending our power out from that dimension where our minds reside to this day. Imhotep, I confess, was by this time smarter in many ways than even my advanced and expanded mind, but he described it - although in an ‘imperfect, dumbed down metaphor’, in his own words - as though we had broken through a mirror between realities during our accident. We had punched through the metal backing, allowing us to see your universe, but there was still a pane of clear glass in our path. We could see through it, and, by using humans as a channel, could send enough power out that it seeped through the barrier and allowed us to perform the feats we did, but not reach through and act directly. So his plan was, to continue the metaphor, to add a new barrier to the glass, a second layer almost - but a much stronger one. An extra barrier between the dimensions of your universe, preventing us from seeing into your reality, and blocking our efforts to channel our power. Anything we tried would be unable to affect your universe, and instead would impact on this new barrier universe. The reality to which you have been transported - countless worlds, connected by portals, filled with all manner of magical creatures - is that barrier reality. It is an extra dimension, superimposed between your main universe and the plane where our consciousnesses reside. Until that barrier is removed, any power we try to exert is blocked by the new reality, with only the barest traces able to sneak between the cracks and slip into your world. As an extra precaution, and in an attempt to allow humanity to move on fully from our influence, it was also decided that part of the spell would be to transfer all the magical beings we had created over the years to this new barrier world, which is why we ended up calling this world the Vault. In addition to acting as a barrier, it was a holding place for all life that contained even the slightest trace of our power, as we were determined that no influence from the Numen could remain. Unfortunately, while many of those beings were mindless, dangerous monstrosities, some had developed intelligence, and began to develop their own culture. There was no way to separate the good from the bad. All the Numens creations had to be removed. We tried to be humane, to separate those dangerous creatures into… paddocks, I suppose you could say, and give each species their own world.”
“Wait, that's what the doors are?” interrupted Grant. “They’re just, like… gates between paddocks? Or like different tanks at an aquarium, dividing the species?”
“That is one of their purposes, yes,” answered Ki. “From what we have observed, it seems that the Forsaken have come into contact with some of them, and those creatures seem happy enough. Something that brings me great joy, as I counted many members of the sapient species as friends in those days.
“But, there were problems with the plan. The first problem we discovered - although, this was only a problem from my selfish point of view - was that there was no way to exclude me from this process. At first I was rather upset by this, and spent decades trying to come up with a solution, but as the years went on and I began to see how our mere presence was mutating the environment, I became glad of this fact. For all that I may claim to have tried to redeem the disgusting actions of my first few years on the planet, I was no innocent. My original plan was to depart and explore your universe - after all, that was my original job, back on my homeworld - but I accepted the necessity of my removal from your universe in the end. It was an appropriate penance
“The second and third problems, however, were much more serious. First was that, no matter how much we strengthened the walls of this reality, we discovered that the Numen’s minds had become so fixated on Earth, and in particular finding hosts, that there was no way to prevent them from reaching out and dragging hosts into the Vault. Similarly, we realised early on that while we could make the walls impossible to break through from your universe, so that no corrupt Magi or former host could try and break the barrier, it was impossible to create a truly unbreakable wall from the other side. We Numen had such power, such huge metaphysical energy, that if left to our own devices, our power would begin to seep through the cracks, find every flaw in the construction of the barrier dimension, and eventually widen them enough to shatter it. This was, obviously, a devastating blow when first we discovered it. Somehow, we needed to devise a way to distract the gods, prevent them from focusing their power, and eventually breaking the Vault open and inflicting their presence on Earth once more. However, by providence, our third problem actually provided us with this solution.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“When we originally designed the spell, trying to implement it on a smaller scale to run tests, they all quickly failed. We were uncertain why - the spell was sound in principle, and my foresight assured me that we were on the right path to finally save your world. But, after many years, Imhotep found the solution once more. He realised that, in order to make the spell work, someone needed to make a sacrifice. One of the Magi had to be trapped in this new world too, to complete the spell from the other side of the barrier, to reinforce it on both sides. Otherwise, the Vault would be too weak and fail within a matter of days. Imhotep was, at first, adamant that he be the one to be contained within the Vault, but the other Magi outnumbered him and shouted him down. He was too important, too wise, and it was decided by the rest of the Magi that he was needed to lead them on Earth, and help guide humanity to a more civilised world. In the end, it was one of our first recruits, Muirenn, who volunteered to be trapped. Her sister was a host, and she said that it was a sacrifice she was more than willing to make if it was the only way to solve the problem of the Numen, and prevent others from suffering the same fate as her sister.
“In the end, she was the best choice for another reason as well. She had, over the centuries, been focused on a most ingenious possible answer to defeat the gods. While it never worked on Earth, she realised this new reality made her plan possible, as it was a world that we could construct from the ground up. She had been focused on, instead of stopping or killing the gods, slowing them down. She reasoned that if we were, to continue the imperfect metaphor from before, reaching through a pane of glass to influence the world, perhaps there was a way to… thicken, I suppose, or maybe fog that glass, to make it harder for us to exert our will. She was trying to not stop our power, but slow it down. Make it harder for us to do anything, make us need to gather our energy before we could act. While she never succeeded, the Vault was the missing key to her idea. It was planned that she would weave into the spell, from her side, a sort of mesh, or filter, between this barrier and the glass of our plane. The idea was to place a limit on how quickly any Numen could gather their power, or even project their consciousness to their host, making it take far far longer before they could possess a host fully. An incredibly important idea. As I said, while we knew it was impossible to prevent the gods from drawing a host into the Vault, her discovery helped greatly lower the number of people that would suffer this fate. Especially as she soon realised another way to prolong our banishment even further. A grim, but necessary plan.”
Ki drew a deep, slow breath, then exhaled just as slowly. “She realised, you see,” he said mournfully, “that with her spell woven into the fabric of the Vault, each new host that appeared would start off weak, and over the centuries become stronger and stronger. Eventually, the Numen possessing them would have projected enough of their power into their host to be able to manifest fully and take control. However, if, just before that host succumbed to their Numen, they were killed… well, all that time, all that gathered power, would be wasted. That Numen’s influence would be forced to, once again, seek out a new host, and begin the process all over again. So, since she was going to be trapped there for all eternity, alongside these poor souls that had been dragged to a fate they did not ask for… well, as Isaiah had personally vouched to me, death was a preferable fate to becoming a host. So it was decided that she would, on occasion, have to… reset the slate, so to speak.”
Grant stared at him. “So,” he said slowly, anger beginning to bubble up inside him once more, “you’re telling me that not only did every person I meet today get ripped from their lives by some shitty, petty gods, but that from the moment they arrived here, their lives have been doomed anyway? All that effort that they put into building a life here, making a community, trying to find their way - our way, back to our loved ones - it was all just… pointless?”
Ki met his eyes. “No,” he said resolutely, “it was a necessity.”
Grant and Ki left Grant’s second household, and wandered aimlessly in the black void of his mind, giving Grant a moment to process everything. He was outraged at the fate of the Forsaken that Ki had just revealed. To be snatched from their lives, trapped in a dangerous, abnormal world, and to overcome all that danger, all those obstacles, to manage to build a community, to spend decades trying to escape their new home, only to be murdered before they could reach their goal…
On the one hand, Grant obviously saw the reasoning behind the plan. While everyone he had met so far in Sanctuary seemed perfectly nice, there was no denying that their powers could easily be abused. If otherworldly, amoral beings were the ones wielding that power instead? Grant could imagine how easily they would subjugate Earth, and bring humanity to its knees, as they apparently had in the past. And sure, maybe modern weapons would make it slightly harder - he was hard pressed to imagine anyone, even a fully powered Numen, surviving a nuclear weapon - even if that were true, such a conflict would devastate Earth for centuries. Not to mention the fact that the Numen could possess the people in charge of the nuclear arsenal, and turn the weapons against mankind themselves.
But on the other hand, as one of those who had been taken against his will and shoved into this position, he was indignant that his life was now on a timer. That no matter what he did, no matter how close he got to thinking he would be free once more, no matter how strong he got, it would all be for naught.
He tried to refocus. Clearly, whatever Ki had in mind, that was not meant to be his fate now. He had promised that he would bring Grant home, and Grant, despite everything that had been revealed, believed him. Something must have gone wrong, something that made Ki need to act, to escape the Vault himself. Grant ran through what he had learned, trying to come to some conclusions that would give him an idea of what was going on.
“So,” he said, deep in thought, “for whatever reason, something has changed your mind. You… you must have figured out a way to escape the Vault, right? Some plan that you didn’t account for… and now you’re worried that another Numen is close to figuring it out too. So you want to escape before they do, so you can… what? Reinforce the walls, I guess? Create another barrier?”
Ki nodded, relieved that Grant’s anger had abated slightly. “Yes. There is a flaw, a chink in the armour of this plan, one that didn’t occur to us. It became obvious to me only a few centuries after the spell was enacted, sadly. But, to my relief, it did not occur to my fellow gods until recently”
Grant puzzled over what he had learned, trying to spot the flaw. “Well,” he said slowly, pieces falling together in his mind, “it must have something to do with the fact that we can talk. You’re here, in my mind, and from what you’ve said, and from what Kyra and the others didn’t say, none of them have conversations with their Source, do they? You already said that the barrier wasn’t perfect… that, if you had nothing to do, no distractions, any one of you would be able to break through. So, somehow, you’ve managed to gather all that power. Enough power that you were able to possess me, and now you know that someone else has figured it out. It… I guess… Oh! Fuck, I think I see it. It’s because you never took a host, did you? Since you didn’t even want to escape, your power never tried to find a host! You’ve just been sitting here, year after year, gathering your power. So that now, when you finally did decide to take a host, you have centuries of built up power able to manifest!”
Ki smiled approvingly. “Exactly! An obvious flaw, in retrospect, but I was not too concerned when I first realised that I was gathering power around myself. After all, a large part of our plan, which we will soon get to, revolved around the fact that my fellow Numen would be desperate to return to Earth by any means possible. Not to mention that, even despite my power, I still lost a significant amount when I did decide I needed to act. The power you possess with me as your Source is far from my full capabilities, if we were on Earth. For the others, the idea of not trying to escape, of sitting patiently, gathering their power, didn’t occur to any of them for many, many years.” He grew sombre. “Until recently, that is.”
Grant nodded in understanding. “The recent deaths. The ones that haven’t had any replacements yet. You think they’ve discovered the flaw, and are doing what you did?”
“I know it,” Ki said grimly. “One element I have not touched on is the effect that the creation of the Vault had on us, you see. When the Vault was created, and that barrier sprung up, all the power that we had invested into our avatars and Earth in general was suddenly cut off from us. We were greatly weakened, and for the first few centuries, we were too weak and fragmented to interact with the new universe, or even each other. However, eventually our powers began to return, and the others began to take hosts - but, to do so, they were forced to send every trace of power they gathered through the ‘dimensional glass’, as I suppose I described it before, and thus their presence on our own dimension has been minimal. As my own powers have recovered over time, it has become slightly easier to peer through the filter that Muirenn enacted, allowing me brief glimpses of the events that have unfolded in the Vault and its many worlds. It is still hard to see, as it takes a lot of time and concentration to get even the smallest flash. That is what first made me aware that some hosts had died and not been replaced. Correspondingly, in the years since their deaths, I have begun to sense my compatriots’ presences once more. I have felt them, their minds, brief flashes of awareness coming to them, just enough for them to resist their instincts, to begin to wait. It will take time, yes - decades, even centuries, but soon enough they will take a host, and emerge into the Vault and its worlds with more power than Muirenn can handle on her own. They will kill her, they will gather together, and they will simply push on the wall between realities once more with their full power, and they will be set free. It is coming, as certain as anything. Unless we stop them first.”
Grant shivered slightly, the scale of the task that Ki was presenting becoming clear. “And… you chose me? Of all the people on Earth, you chose me to help you beat up a few gods and save the world? Seriously?”
Ki laughed heartily. “Well, not exactly. We do not possess the power or mental awareness to choose a host, as such. Reaching through the Vault to Earth is barely possible, and we can certainly never gather enough awareness to actually know what is happening there or who we are selecting. We have preferences, types of people that our powers tend to seek out, humans we… resonate with, I suppose is the best way of describing it. But I did not choose you, specifically, Grant. However, having gained insight into your life and personality, I am more than happy with the selection my powers made.” He smiled at Grant warmly.
“I think that’s not quite as comforting or buddy-like as you think it is, given the situation,” Grant said dryly. “But… thanks anyway, I guess.”
They continued walking through the void. The area with the three houses and tent was out of sight by now.
“So,” Grant continued, “another thing I’m gonna take a stab at. This ‘enemy’ that you’ve mentioned a few times… do you mean Muirenn?”
A shadow passed over Ki’s face. “Yes,” he whispered, “I am afraid I do.”
“I don’t understand,” said Grant, frowning slightly. “Why is she our enemy? Shouldn’t we be talking to her? If we tell her what’s been happening, she’ll help us escape, won’t she?”
Ki looked down, sorrow radiating from him. “I do not think so. Not anymore.”
There was a pause, then Ki began to speak, slowly, hesitatingly.
“The problem,” he said, “is that I believe that none of us, at that time, truly appreciated how fragile the human psyche can be, given the right circumstances. By the time we enacted the Vault spell, some 2500 years ago, Imhotep was already several millennia old. Muirenn was similarly ancient, only a few hundred years younger, and they, along with the rest of the immortal Magi, had come to terms with their age. Humankind is not designed to live that long, and some of our members rejected their powers out of fear of living forever. Muirenn, however, had adapted to immortality remarkably well. But over the past few years, as I have attempted to find a way to stop the Numen once more and prevent their return… I have learned that there are limits to one's sanity. Even as remarkable a person as her.
“You see, when I first became aware that some hosts had not been replaced, I did not immediately begin to search for a host of my own. My first instinct was to try and contact Muirenn, to explain the danger, and consult with her on what to do, for during our time on Earth I had heeded her counsel for centuries, and never found it lacking. It took a lot of time and energy to break through the filter she had created without alerting anyone, but I managed it. You should know, by the way, that Muirenn is capable of changing her body as she wills. It was part of her initial plan, to constantly change bodies, faking deaths, presenting herself as a newcomer often enough to alleviate any suspicion that she might incur when she was forced to kill a host that was close to being fully possessed. So part of why I struggled to contact her was that I did not know which of the Forsaken she was. I had to be more general in my search, trying to focus on her mental imprint more than her physical form, and suffice to say, I was out of practice.
“Anyway, I eventually managed it. I appeared in her mind, as I appear to you now, expecting a warm reunion, and a comprehensive plan of action when I presented the problem that had arisen. However, when I got there, her mind… Grant, it was… broken. Shattered. There is no other word for it. I wandered through a fractured landscape, trying to examine her memories, determine what had befallen her, but it was close to impossible. Every step I took, I was assailed by fragments of emotion, ghosts and demons of the mind. Eventually, I began to piece together a portrait of her struggle. What I learned was that it was simply… too much. Being forced to hide amongst people that called her friend, to watch them grow, to live over centuries, only to murder them and repeat the cycle all over again… it broke her, every time. Dozens, hundreds of deaths over the centuries, all of them those that she counted friends, and some of them… more than friends. She could not cope. She had driven herself to the edge, barely holding on to her remaining sanity. So, when I found her true consciousness at last, and spoke to her… she rebelled. She lashed out at me, screaming incoherently, claiming I was a trick, a delusion, a fiend trying to turn her from her path. She… would not accept, could not accept, that her actions over the years, killing so many beloved friends, even lovers, would come to mean nothing if there was a flaw in our plan, and that the Vault would fail regardless. She rambled that she had a solution, that she knew what she was doing, and that I was just trying to trick her, to sway her. So, she drove me out. I do not think she even remains truly aware of our meeting, as I suspect she buried the memory deep within her, lest the possibility that the Vault could fail drive her completely mad.
“So I was forced to make my own plan. I was forced to reach out, and drag an unsuspecting soul into this prison, and for that I am sorry. But there was no other way. Muirenn has been driven mad, and if she was ever made aware of my presence or our goal, she would endeavour to kill us as soon as possible, to help her maintain the illusion that her actions have not been for naught. So, she becomes our enemy. And though it grieves me that she has fallen so far, I am comforted by the certain knowledge that, were she in her right mind, she would understand why we must stop her, and why we must break free of the Vault. While I do not wish to kill her, at the present time, I can think of no other way of allowing us to return to Earth and devise a new way of banishing the Numen for when the Vault inevitably fails.”
“I’m sorry,” Grant said softly, “that sounds… truly awful. I cannot imagine what she has gone through. I would have been driven mad long ago, I’m certain. But I still don’t entirely get it - why do we need to stop her? Why can’t we just escape while completely ignoring her existence?”
“Because, despite my centuries of gathering power, I can still only manifest a fraction of my total being,” Ki explained. “The spell that Muirenn wove into the fabric of this reality still hinders me. You see, the flaw that I discovered in the Vault, and one reason why I was not concerned at first, is that it is most susceptible to the combined efforts of the Numen. While I have been gathering power for millenia, between the effort of finding a host and projecting my consciousness through the filter into this world, I am currently unable to manifest enough power to successfully break free. I am only one man, after all - or one god, I suppose. However, if all of the Numen worked together, gathering their power for only a hundred years - two, maybe - then all emerging at once, with their consciousnesses fully manifested, they would collectively have enough power to force through the filter that she enacted and escape while ignoring her efforts to stop them. To prevent that from happening, we must escape first. Sadly, while the filter remains in place, we cannot do so, and the only way to undo the spell, and allow us to escape and save your world, is to kill her. The spell is tied to her lifeforce. If we kill her, I will have enough power to break us through realities immediately. Sadly, as a result, the Numen will grow in power more quickly than they otherwise would, but we will still have years, maybe even a decade, to locate the remaining Magi on Earth and come up with another, more secure Vault. Before the original spell was cast, Imhotep assured me that he would continue to work on ideas to stop the Numen. Hopefully, he has weathered the trials of humanity better than Muirenn did, or at the very least, we must hope that some of his writings survive, and we can banish the Numen permanently.”
Grant swallowed. “I… uh… I’m not sure that I can just… kill someone. Fate of the Earth in the balance or not, I just… I don’t know.”
“Do not concern yourself too much with that,” Ki said quietly. “If my plan works as I hope, she will leave you no choice.” He clasped Grant’s shoulder, giving it a brief squeeze. “Come. Let me explain the first step we must take, that of disguising the fact that you have me as your Source.”