The|MULTIVERSE

EPISODE 46: All Too Well

In a trickle of proud joy, Ricven smirked—that slick creak of the lips; a smooth narrow of those enthralling cosmo eyes and a tiny dip of the head. It was so dextrous, streetwise, it was even more humiliating for Tortartus who witnessed the Sepian's heroic nature when triumph favored him and his crew as they confronted his giant face, his metal turtle-neck of ridged plates stretched from his dented shell.

They all faced him. The rusty-headed leader with his super-duper mystical sword and fairy voice of mouthy reason, the twang-voiced triggerman with a killer hat, three furry-looking humanoids and their crocodilic-skinned brother, a carrot-topped tekmage who looked liked she belonged in a certain team-based multiplayer online first-person-shooting video game and one malicious woman who'd have the Ghost of Sparta himself blush. Multiversers was what they called themselves. World-runners. They ventured through the worlds beyond and thwarted all that offended the balance. This was what Tortartus and his kindred saw them to be. Everyone knew the multiversers as a force to be respected, to be feared, to be hated...

To be destroyed.

And as the giant abomination of nefarious metal laid on his belly like a withering sea tortoise at the end of his rope, Tortartus understood where he went wrong.

He underestimated this league of multiversal legends like all the others. "I had foreseen this instance, but I've defied it."

"And that's why you've lost—again," said Ricven.

"So... You remember..."

"Remember what? I only spoke wisdom. I have no flippin' idea who or what you are, and while a particular object of mine—that's been benching out like usual—could definitely jog my memory, I think it's best that we keep the door to those unknown past series of debacles closed and use this failure of yours as an escalator into the future."

Fae, roosting on Ricven's head, dipped a muddled set of eyes at him. "Just what are you yacking about?"

That answer rested in Tortartus' embellished reply. "The legitimacy of your words... Strange sagacity." They speak of unorthodox and axiom. A principle that commands infallibility, authorizing the very thing I must not ignore. Failure is the building blocks of success. Stones of ascension; its erroneous cracks filled with sediments of knowledge. Dwelling on memories lost is a bane of existence, and it is that existence, my existence, that has fallen victim to it."

"Deep," Ricven smiled—as always. "Still gonna die, though."

Then Hanakin glowered. "No."

Ricven shot her the 'WHAT?!' look. The others looked with mute intrigue. When Hanakin spoke, even when it was just a speck of words, one would be wise to open their ears, and hope to whatever god they claimed that those words weren't dipped and poison and honed like blades.

Tortartus couldn't fathom it. "You... Taker of demons. You assume my presence deserving of mercy?"

"No. But you live because of Juruda, and you will tell me why. You will leave not one word to the riddling void, or I will bring you suffering."

Gremlyn concurred. His voice a hype tool and one claw had clenched and shaken at the beast. "Yeah! Much suffering! Turn you to turtle soup!"

"We return not for the white devil." The metal horror of smoldering evil leaked a pulsating green liquid from his cracks. "We rise for the ones behind the veil. You will know them as The Order. We were brought from the blackness to cultivate a legion of our own, the demons of metal and soul, to join the ranks of the coming tide. Yifrit, Iceus, and I are not the only ones to be pulled from the heart of our Netherine."