Wandering down the street i had grabbed another skewer for Thorn as he snacked on it atop my shoulder. Drawing some estranged gazes from the varying fantasy species on this world. "So. Where we headed now, princess?"
"South. Call it good luck or whatever but it seems we already found one of the three kings torn off soul fragments."
"Knowing your luck it's probably gonna be the opposite." Done with his skewer Thorn tossed the finished stick into a bin as we walked down the street.
Sneering at the jab i could only agree. "I guess thats just the normal thing about me."
"Okay listen, pisspot." The crow exhorted. "When you say 'it's a normal thing', not only is that the truth its also a warning. My feathers stand on end whenever you say that."
Exiting the city out its front gates i replied curtly to Thorn's worry. "If the path demands you to walk through hell. Walk like you own place. Isn't that something you used to say a lot?"
Sighing loudly Thorn slumped against my neck with his shadowy bird body as I continued to walk across the road heading for a forest. "Don't cite the fucking scriptures to me. I'm just saying. Whenever you get led on by your curiosity we end up either destroying a world or breaking the universe. There is no in between."
Grinning at the truth of fact there was nothing i could say to deny Thorn. Before visiting Earth we basically broke Idaten's sky trying to steal the [cadenza note empyrean].
Casually walking for the next few hours across Laegii's main continent, Thorn and i passed many places that he once recounted as familiar. The deathly forest Cayde will grow up in the future. A frontier city filled with adventurers and one of the three human capital cities, as well as a mountain that Thorn previously claimed as his nest when he was still a dragon.
After a month of exploration around Laegii's upper continent though, Thorn and i arrived at the city where the soul fragment of a sovereign perfected was gestating its vessel. Neither of us were ready for what we saw though.
"Well this is... strange."
"Your telling me. It looks like reality had a sick rave."
In front of us at the end of the road, what was once a medieval city had turned into a gravity anomaly as houses and roads floated in the air. Streaks of red, green, and blue light cut across the area like cracks in the surface of the dimension, and the entire area was encased within a dome of frozen time that was steadily expanding.
Tapping my finger against the outer wall of the time slowing dome. It rippled out like i touched a puddle of water.
"Don't just touch the anomaly!" Slapping my hand away Thorn berated me. "The last time we saw something like this you were the one that caused it! You know exactly what it means to touch things randomly, pisspot!"
Frowning at Thorn's mother hen instinct i placed my hands into my autumnal jackets pockets.
"So any ideas on how to get in without destroying half the continent?"
Looking around at the jagged reality, like a simulation that had glitched apart, i soon came up with something. "I guess we could knock."
Slapping his wing over his face Thorn sighed. "I know your joking but you really should just leave the humour to me."
[aspect: taken devourer, takes the time!]
[skill: eternal hole, rewinds!]
Black-silver flames emanated from my knuckles as i knocked my backhand against the dome of displaced time. Slush silver liquid exploded out of the air around me wrapping around the dome like serpents as the streams of frozen liquid wrapped around the dome sinking hundreds of fangs into the outer wall.
[skill: eternal hole, has stabilised the time!]
"That should give us time to find the source and fix this." Walking into the dome of glitching time and space I immediately sensed the familiar presence of one of the three kings. It was weak, almost human-like, but it definitely was them. "Lets go."
Walking through the broken time, it was as if when i took 3 steps down the unbound street, 2 of them got refunded while I somehow acquired 5 more steps in distance. Regardless of how much I'm immune to unnatural phenomena because of my paracausal origins its strange that the time is still affecting me in such a way.
What should have been maybe a 10 minute walk turned into an hour long sprint as i bounced and jumped form rock to rock with [mach rush] leaving a neon amber-silver streak behind me until i at last arrived at the source of everything.
"Wahh! Waaahh!!" A lone baby crying out in pain as it was held in the frozen arms of his richly dressed mother. Who was attempting to toss the baby off a balcony and onto the sharp fence surrounding the manor they were in. "Waah!"
Whistling in astonishment Thorn gazed up with surprised eyes while i stared unbothered. "Talk about bad parenting. Even- no. No, your maker was worse than this."
Jumping upwards with a boost of aether i landed on the balcony edge and started prying the baby out of the mothers hand one finger at a time before going inside the manor. Walking past the startled servants and resting the crying baby down on a glass table.
As it cried Thorn and i both looked down at the weeping baby wondering what was going to happen.
"So whats next?" I asked.
"How the fuck would i know? Do we feed him a beer or another baby or something?" Thorn not so jokingly said.
"Its a child not a devil." Berating the crow my raised voice startled him.
"Alright, alright. The closest we have been to childcare is those brats you taught one time, and they were already out of their diapers at that point." Groaning Thorn thought of a few things just like i did until he spoke again. "We could hand em' over to Anika. She's good with kids."
"We could. But that wont fix Laegii's quickly deteriorating time stream." A very bad idea popped in my head with a spark of insanity that i couldn't help but chuckle at. "I guess i could go into his soul and erase whats there of the sovereign perfected's ego. The baby wont accidentally break time if it doesn't know it can."
"You are batshit insane. Wont your soul overload the baby's body then?" Thorn asked while blocking me from the child on the table.
Snapping my left hands fingers multiple chains stretched around the area from the walls stabilising the dimensions around me and Thorn. "Not if i drag both our consciousness' into my throne-world. Our souls will stay where they are and the baby wont be at risk of dying." Falling backwards onto a velvet chair i got comfy. "Ingrik."
Materialising from thin air the towering knight kneeled next to me. "My lord, i did not expect you to summon me from the
"Protect my and this babies bodies. I don't trust Thorn to not go off to find a snack." The raven stuck his tongue out at me with a glare but he knew i was right. "I'll see if i can hasten Laegii's time stream as well."
"As you command." With a slight nod of his helmet the black knight stood up and rammed his great sword into the floor next to where I was i sat down.
[skill: horizon chain, links minds!]
A chain stretched out from my forehead and phased into the baby's skull and i felt the ego of the baby get sucked out and fly into my brain where I got promptly punched into my own internal domain.
My body quickly solidified within the dreamscape of my own creation. The throne-world
Now standing on a red meadow filled with golden trees adorned with lilac pink leaves and a giant world tree breaking through the imaginary sky in the far distance while the imaginary city beneath it bustled with the ink-spirits making a community for themselves.
Turning my head from the serene and sparkling world of mine though, i saw the pure emptiness of the baby's inner world cutting off at a part of my imaginary creation. It was like the border of the world had been found. Except it wasn't my world that it contained into.
Walking forwards i stepped into the white void and a trail of red grass, silver flowers, and golden tree roots followed behind me as i entered the blank canvas.
Throne-worlds are the culmination of a person's identity. The representation of who they are and what they are like. You could tell many things about a person just by seeing the colours and aesthetics of that imaginary world.
Its traditionally called a throne-world because only exalted beings can enter and materialise their own domain, but a more apt name would be the inner soul world. Thats because these worlds are located deep within the creators soul and can only be brought out from the soul.
There are methods to create gateways or portals into a god or transcendent's throne-world from the material plane but the only real use of that is to entertain the founder of that soul world, or hide any objects they would not wish anyone to find.
Most gods use their throne-worlds to host sports and other games to generate more faith from their supporters while others tend to keep their throne-world free from others tampering. I myself only use my throne-world to store my apocalyi army, but i also use it for one other method no god or transcendent has dared to do.
Stopping my advance through the white world i came upon a lone man with brown hair and tanned dark skin wearing modern blue tunic with a navy blue sash wrapped around his waist holding a sheathed sword. The man was very muscular, his arms alone were probably as wide as my thigh.
"Ahem!" Clearing my throat i called to the man and he jumped up in surprise.
Looking around was I amazed to see that i couldn't clearly define the mans face before spotting the four black and blue feathers ornamented on the front of his tunic of a bird i had never seen before.
"...What are you doing here, messiah of wrath?"
My eyes moved down to see the baby being cradled in the faceless mans arms. Now calm and no longer crying like it was outside. Considering the kind of being he is I'm surprised he hasn't just killed it.
"The outside world is broken." I exhaled. "Time seems to have scattered apart and is beginning to tear down the space around it. I came in here to amend that."
"Hahaha!" Bursting out with laughter the burly man fired happily before stopping. "I may be just a fragment of a soul, but i doubt you could kill me, homunculus."
"That so?" The doubt lacing my voice poisoned the muscular mans ears as he attempted to glare at me. Though without a face that was quite difficult. "If you were still an all powerful god you'd have killed that child and taken over its body. Ready to re-merge with with your main self for the grand salvation."
Calming down his anger the faceless muscular man asked, "what are you after from me?"
"I'm simply curious. Why haven't you killed that baby yet?" Pointing to the child in the faceless sovereigns arms i spoke my interest aloud. "I have two guesses. My first guess is, now that you are your own self you don't like the idea of being erased."
Spotting no reaction from the man i moved on.
"My second guess, is that you've lost all your strength." A nervous twitch in the mans neck caught my silver eyes immediately and i saw i was right. "The only reason time is broken outside is simply because of the weight of your soul. No matter how small it is, a gods soul is still a gods. And theres no way a baby can trigger such an event when its soul isn't fully developed. Its why you haven't killed it yet. The body would implode the moment you replaced it."
"Tch! Mad homunculus, you should really know when to keep your mouth shut." Blue gas steamed off from the muscular mans body in a rage as my intuition proved to be correct. "So what are you going to do about it? Kill me?!"
"Maybe!" Madness emanated from me as i grinned insanely, combating the sovereigns soul with my own amber-silver energy before the white void sucked it all away. "It doesn't matter if i can. But its no fun to do things alone."
An earthquake shook the white void coming from my throne-world far behind me as the world tree shook it's trunk. Catching the muscular mans attention. "The world tree Sefirot. Is your plan to trap me and have it drain me dry with it's roots?"
"No." I smiled, taking a few steps backwards. "Before things start I'm going to make one more assumption. You have no connection to your main soul whatsoever, so regardless of what i do here, Clarity wont have any idea about what's happening."
The man placed the baby down and got into a battle stance as he cracked his large knuckles. "So? The only weapon you have that can faze me kralscell is the world tree Sefirot. You said it yourself, kralscell! No matter how minor a god is they are still a god. You however are just a pebble on the path."
"True. They're not though." I pointed behind me and two great beasts emerged from the red forest behind me,
A mighty golden scaled leviathan that boasted power with it's explosive presence and a silver veiled woman with six angelic wings with an aura that sucked in even the void around her.
"It cant be..." stunned by what he was seeing the man's blue aura faded as he tried to understand what was happening. "Whats left of the erroneous? You were one of their virtues, wrath?!"
Grinning to myself i stepped back while cradling the sleeping child in my arms. "No. I'm just a friend of theirs." Looking behind him the man couldn't compare how i had taken the child from behind him without noticing. "I owe them a lot. So once they've tired you out. I'll take you apart."