"A revolt in hell?" I asked, skeptically.

  "The creator deities are lodestones of the universe," Garland said, as if that meant anything to me. "When the universe was created, parts of it came awake and coalesced into the first deities. If there was anything beforehand, I don't know what or who they might be nor do I care. However, they're a fundamental part of everything that--"

  "Yeah, they're gods," I interrupted, confused as to why he needed to point that out. "You're describing the definition of them."

  "Well, there's gods and gods," Garland said, shrugging. "Just like Perun being absent affected things on how the universe fundamentally worked, Veles is the same way. He's pretty much the incarnation of the Underworld for humans."

  I wasn't someone who'd been religious before coming to Mokosh and still wasn't that fond of the concept, but I wasn't militant either. Still, it was hard to ignore all the fundamental truths of reality I'd been exposed to. One of them being that the creator deities: Veles, Svarog, and Perun were among the earliest beings in creation. There had been others, but they'd been there at the beginning, beginning. They could also combine into an entity called Triglav who, if not God, was a good Demiurge analog. Unfortunately, with Perun dead and Veles corrupted, there was no Triglav to keep all the other deities on point.

  "The Underworld is Heaven, Hell, and everything in-between," I said, remembering how it had been described to me. "At least afterlife wise. Sort of one big Greek-style real estate rather than a bunch of separate ones."

  "Yeah," Garland said. "There's other death deities but they're living on his back for lack of a better term."

  "And Veles going utterly insane hasn't helped matter," I said, trying to follow his logic. "Which bleeds over into the entirety of all the various realms. Is that what you're saying?"

  I was imagining fluffy cloud heaven under assault from the forces of a burning Hell like a particularly weird World of Warcraft expansion. It was hard enough imagining an afterlife but doubly so to imagine they could be compromised like this.

  "It's more that breaking his oath has ruined things," Garland said, his voice taking on an echoing quality. "Veles being evil could be tolerated but oath-breaking when you're the embodiment of the Underworld? That's something else entirely. Up becomes down, right becomes left, and the supposedly immutable parts of the universe are all changed up. Veles has abandoned the Underworld for Earth and that means there's uprisings of souls from all over. The individual death gods can maintain their realms but their power weakens the longer he's absent."

  Well, that didn't sound good.

  "So it's like Kevin Smith's Dogma," I replied. "Except when God was proven fallible, that would result in the universe being unmade."

  I hoped that wasn't in the cards but, at this point, I wouldn't have been surprised. It seemed that every step forward we took only ended up revealing that the road had gotten longer. This should have been the end of our journey, confronting Veles here on Bald Mountain, but now we were heading back to Earth. It was like the Kefka-devastated world in Final Fantasy VI or the revelation of the upside-down castle in Symphony of the Night. I didn't want to purely communicate in video game terms but it was hard not to after a year of living in one.

  "Yeah, I didn't watch a lot of movies while dead," Garland said, pointing out an obvious fact. "I mostly spent it having sex and fishing."

  "Oh," U replied. "Fishing? Really?"

  "I like fishing," Garland said. "You should try it sometime."

  "I don't like hurting animals," I replied. "Just eating them."

  Garland snorted before chuckling. It was the most human I'd seen him. "In any case, I was enjoying my afterlife when everything went to shit. The afterlife for the good was soon full of zombies, the afterlife for the middling was at war with itself, and the hells for the wicked? Well, honestly, they're pretty much the same. So, when Larry arrived in the afterlife and set things as right as he could, I agreed to be sent back as his champion. We have the afterlife to save now."

  "Great," I muttered. "No pressure."

  "He also wanted me to take over from you," Garland said.

  "Wait, what? He sent an entire message to me about how I was the only hope!" I said, appalled.

  "Yeah, well he's a lying bastard," Garland replied. "I would have killed him for what he'd done to Celestyne but he was already dead so I didn't see the point."

  "Yeah, how is she doing?" I asked.

  "Fine," Garland said. "I mean, still dead."

  "Oh," I replied. "Right. Well, Alek and I--"

  "Celestyne and I reunited in death," Garland said, cutting me off. "You should probably tell your cousin that his romance with her is not going to go anywhere else."

  "Yeah, about that..." I trailed off. "I'm going to be marrying your stepsister. Ania and I are together now. I hope you understand that your marriage with Agata is probably done too. Til death do you part and all that."

  "We actually don't have that in our vows," Garland pointed out. "Couples are expected to stay married in the afterlife."

  "Oh," I said, pausing.

  "Divorce is very easy, though," Garland said. "You just agree before an altar of Mokosh."

  "Really?" I asked.

  "I was a shitty husband to Agata," Garland said, pausing.

  "You don't say," I said, not wanting to comment on the fact he made her an oath-breaker and had a child with the Dragon Queen while she was married to a Mongol warrior that was supposedly Garland's friend. There was also his relationship to Ania.

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  Garland frowned. "You didn't have to agree so quickly."

  "I mean, there's not much room for argument," I said. "I only know your adventures from the books in my world. You were a great hero but kind of a cad."

  "Kind of is understating matters," Garland said, pausing. "I was an unwanted bastard growing up in the house of an incredibly honorable man. A man who loved a goddess and worshiped her but also honored his vows to his wife."

  I was about to interrupt his story by saying, yeah, I knew all that, but he kept going.

  "In the end, his own honor destroyed him when he tried to make peace between the Old King's daughters and the Poppy family," Garland said, calmly. "Being a Dark Undermaster was more a place I ended up rather than embraced. It was a way of escaping the horrors of the past but you can't run from your past forever. My sisters were prisoners at the Royal Capital and my stepmother the bride of a monster--"

  "I heard that!" Maelor the Black called from across the room.

  Garland didn't seem to pay him any attention. "I sought to lose myself in the petty heroism of a monster hunter. I didn't realize, though, that the overweight bard who accompanied me was the Wise Man. That he was collecting stories of me and spreading them around in hopes of forging me into his tool against Veles."

  "I don't know why you're telling me this," I said, genuinely confused. I wasn't exactly good at social engagements. Even with my boosted CHA score, I still struggled to understand what people wanted from given conversations. There was a reason I hadn't been doing a big Mel Gibson speech to all the troops preparing to fight the undead horde.

  "You need to know that you exist as a weapon," Garland said, softly. "The Wise Man, Perun, and now the Witch Queen are people who try to make you the tip of the spear they are wielding against Veles because gods are inherently creatures of stories. They believe that if you are someone that occupies the role of hero then you will beat Veles and save the world."

  "Is that true?" I asked, oddly trusting Garland more than anyone else in the group, at least with telling me how it was.

  "No," Garland said, simply. "It is a superstition no more true than vampires detest garlic or that kings are appointed by divine right."

  "Gods don't play favorites there?" I asked.

  "They love whoever is supporting them at the time," Garland said, sarcastically. "But their favor is mercurial and swift to change. As the number of dead champions, as I myself prove, nothing prevents the gods from killing any hero seeks to overthrow them. Prophecies are more like a set of instructions than actual readings of the future."

  "Joan mentioned that the Weis Man, Veles, and her all had the gift to see the future," I said. "However, that just meant that the future was always changing since the people involved could adjust what was going to happen to their liking."

  I found that existentially terrifying since it meant everyone who couldn't see the future was effectively a pawn to those who could. It was some real Muad'Dib Dune shit.

  Garland's expression changed at the mention of the world's littlest pope. "How is Joan, anyway?"

  "Cursed with a heavy burden that she has no business possessing," I said, thinking about as much about Joan being Mythras' chosen as I did the gods merging Nightbringer with Agata and Bloodstorm's child. "She's remarkably well adjusted for a person who has to deal with people trying to kill her every day of her life, though. Ania has taken to treating her like a kid sister or adopted daughter, though. If she makes it through this, well, she'll probably have to deal with even more challenges rebuilding the trust of the people."

  The Mytharium or the Church of Mythras was pretty hated throughout the Southern Kingdoms thanks to the fact that its policy for the past couple of generations had been to burn anyone who worshiped the Old Gods or had slightly other-than-the-norm lifestyle choices. I wasn't someone who necessarily believed it was better to reform an institution like that than burn it to the ground, but Joan had done her best and managed to get the Empire on our side. At least most of the Empire. Quite a few lords and priests had the view Mythras didn't know what he was talking about regarding Mythras' will. Which sounds funny until you realize it's real-life people being murdered over the issue.

  "I failed her as well," Garland said, once more ruminating in his own guilt.

  "To be fair, you were dead for most of her life," I replied, not sure if that was actually the best thing to bring up. Garland had been dead for ten years of Mokosh time and the only reason the world hadn't moved on from his legend was because people had continued to walk around claiming to be him. He was the Mokosh version of Robin Hood or King Arthur but with a dozen claimants to the name, each adding to his story. In a way, he was right, he wasn't the only Garland of Nowhere anymore. Garland of Nowhere was larger than all of us, including the original. That would drive me insane. Well, insaner. I wasn't sure I had much claim to sanity these days given all the things I'd done.

  Garland smiled. "That is true."

  "You can still visit her," I replied, frowning. "After this. Be her father."

  Garland looked at me as if I'd said the stupidest thing imaginable. Which was an impressive thing since his eyes were glowing and couldn't really express normal emotion. "You know that's not going to happen. Besides, I doubt the amount of parental attention she'd get from me would equal the kind she'd get from another man with my face."

  I frowned. "I'm getting less of a compliment to my capacity as a hero now and more that this is just a way of indulging in your self-loathing."

  "You sound like a priest," Garland said.

  "Your priests do a lot of pop psychology?" I asked.

  Garland shrugged. "Whatever that means. Ania is lucky to have you."

  "She should be here," I replied.

  "Because she would have your back?" Garland asked.

  "Because she's going to kill me for not letting her be part of the mission to kill Veles," I said, knowing I hadn't had much choice.

  "Probably," Garland said, frowning. "But from what I hear, the Ania you know is different from the one I knew. Softer."

  "Maybe just sharper in a different way," I replied.

  That was when Susanos spoke. "It is time! The portal is ready!"

  "Oh joy," I muttered, about as excited as a kid who just found out Santa had brought him socks.

  "Good luck, Aaron," Garland said. "We're going to need it."

  I didn't dispute his statement as I gathered with the others in front of the portal. It wasn't too late to try to contact the others, to make sure they knew where I was going and why but I couldn't figure out a way to do it. Especially since they'd been removed from my party.

  E-MAIL OTHER PLAYERS? Y/N

  I blinked at the message appearing in my mind's eye.

  I hit Y.

  A keyboard and empty page appeared in front of my face as I thought a very simple message.

  WENT TO BALD MOUNTAIN WITH THE WITCH QUEEN. THE PORTAL IS GOING TO EARTH. GOING TO KILL VELES. RACHEL, ALEK, MAELOR, MARIA ROSE, AND JON ARE HERE. SOMEONE ELSE THAT WOULD TAKE TOO LONG TO EXPLAIN.

  OH, FAIR WARNING, NIGHTCHILD’S POWER IS IN AGATA’S BABY. LIKE, I DON’T WANT TO SPRING THAT ON YOU BUT I HOPE YOU’LL FIGURE SOMETHING TO DO ABOUT IT. I’M PRETTY SURE SHE’S NOT POSSESSED OR ANYTHING, THOUGH. LIKE RACHEL ISN’T EVIL. JUST KIND OF INCESTUOUS.

  Okay, I needed to wrap this message up because it was already going to go down in history as the worst e-mail of all time. There also wasn't much else to say. Well, maybe one last thing.

  I LOVE YOU, ANIA.

  I hit SEND.

  Susanos began chanting a language I didn't understand as the portal began to swirl and shimmer like it contained a miniature hurricane. It reminded me a bit of the special effects for Stargate, but I supposed that was inevitable when dealing with interstellar (interdimensional? I had no idea if Mokosh was in "our" universe or not) portals. Eventually, the effect changed to show an image of Washington D.C.

  Except Washington D.C. had changed. The place no longer looked like the one I'd seen in countless photos and visited that one time for Mock Trial in high school. Instead, it looked like some sort of twisted cyberpunk reimagining of America’s capital. It was nighttime and the sky was blanketed with storm clouds.

  There were black skyscrapers with red lights running along the side, one emblazoned with the Epic DungeoneeringTM E on the side, while the Washington Mall was nothing but a burnt-out crater. The White House was unharmed but now sported a set of red and black banners with a coiled dragon in the center. It looked like a hack's idea of a fascist takeover of the country.

  "Man, Larry C.C. Weis' books are probably better off unfinished if this was where they were going," I muttered, staring at the sight.

  With that, we headed into the portal.

  I somehow knew I was never going to see the Southern Kingdoms again.