Scott of Chromia gasped and crumpled, eyes wild, but he was thankfully alive. "I felt that," He said hoarsely. "I felt that." Shelby just stared at the dead body, lying next to the sacrificial altar. She couldn't believe what had just happened. Did... that just happen? Scott said whoever was killed by that sword... would be dead forever.
Lizzie, still with red eyes, looked interestedly at the fallen elf. Joey, whose eyes were green, looked around wildly. "Xorny? Xornoth?! Where are you?!" He looked at Hermes, with black eyes, and then at Scott's dead body lying by his feet. And then it clicked. "No!" He screamed, falling to his knees. He gripped the handle of his sword. "Who's to blame for this?!"
"Hit him!" Gem shrieked, and a blue splash potion flew through the air and splattered all over Joey. Lizzie hissed and leapt out of the way. Joey blinked several times, and his eyes so obviously green. He glanced at his bloody hands, then at Scott's dead body, and recoiled. "What happened? What just happened?!"
"Aw, you're no fun anymore," Lizzie pouted. "Just when I was starting to like you." Shelby shot a spell at her, and the cat instinctively dodged, laughing at how they thought they could get her, a cat.
But that was what Shelby was counting on, and plants sprouted out of the spot that the spell hit and wrapped around Lizzie, who struggled and clawed at it in vain. The magic plants held her tight. She wasn't escaping anytime soon. Shelby approached her with the last Fae potion and forced it onto her, and soon Lizzie's eyes were blue again. She gasped and glanced frantically around. "What in the world is going on?!"
No one payed attention to her or Joey just yet. They were all still stupefied by Scott's sacrifice. Shelby got rid of the magic plants, sure that Lizzie wasn't a threat anymore now that she was uncorrupted, and everyone crowded around Scott's lifeless form. "What just happened?" Jimmy asked shakily, mirroring everyone's general sentiment.
"Scott and Xornoth's souls were linked," False answered quietly. "When one of them dies, so does the other. He killed himself to stop Xornoth." "Xornoth's dead?" Joey wailed. "Joey! He was a toxic boyfriend!" Shrub scolded, but she too, was rattled by Scott's permanent death.
"Wait, did Scott just die right now?" Mayor Lizzie asked urgently. Everyone turned suspicious faces to her, but her widened eyes were clearly blue, so she was supplied her answer. Lizzie scrambled around in her pockets and took out a bit of chalk. "I know nekomancy," She said quickly. "Don't you mean necromancy?" Joel questioned, raising an eyebrow.
"No, nekomancy is a special kind of dark magic practiced by cats," Shelby explained. "I learned about it in class, but it wasn't a brand of magic that was widely taught." "Well, I know how to do it. Now everyone who knows magic, please help me, for Scott's sake." Mayor Lizzie said, a d Wizard Gem, Sausage, and Shelby stepped forward.
Lizzie showed them particular diagrams to draw on the floor in chalk, and she cleaned up the patterns of sculk and blood and rearranged them. She took the Crown, which Joey was still wearing, and put it on. Then her eyes lolled over to the back of her head as she chanted, "Animam amici morte revoca." At first, nothing happened. Then, sedatedly, Scott twitched. And moved. Everyone gasped and stepped backward.
Just then, near the elf, a ghostly figure seemed to slowly materialize before their eyes. A few emperors shrieked and drew their weapons. Mayor Lizzie stepped backward, uncertain. "That's not supposed to happen!" "Xorny?" Joey called. "Is that you?"
"Lizzie!" Gem shot her an angry glance. Scott's eyelids fluttered and he and got up, holding his head. And the ghostly figure formed into a tangible being. He had magenta-colored hair, red earrings, a black suit with a fancy white sash, and pointed elf ears. He looked around confusedly, then moved closer to Scott.
"What is going on?" He asked with an accent just like Scott's, asking the same question everyone had been aking for a while now. Scott looked around and looked only slightly less confused. "Uh, Xornoth, these are my friends. Guys, this is my older brother Xornoth, who you've definitely never met before."
Everyone glanced at each other, then uncertainly greeted him. Joey opened his mouth like he wanted to say something important, but Shrub clamped her hand over it and dragged him away, whispering a few passive aggressive words in his ear, and the emperor nodded sullenly.
Later it was all explained. So the Rune Blade could send whoever it killed to an afterlife of the slayer's choosing, and Scott sent him and Xornoth to a perfect world where Xornoth was never corrupted and was a pleasant, cheerful older brother. And when Lizzie had summoned him back to the world of the living with her nekomancy, she'd inadvertently brought Xornoth along, what with their twin soul connection.
No one really knew what to do with Xornoth just yet; whenever they saw him they just greeted him and hurried away as fast as possible. Scott was doing his best to be nice, but everyone could tell that he too was feeling uncomfortable around his once-demon brother who he'd recently killed himself to defeat.
Everyone knew what to do with Joey, on the other hand. He was scheduled regular therapy sessions and Shrub came to visit him every other day, along with other once-corrupted emperors, to constantly check on him. Joey was getting kind of annoyed how practically no one was trusting him, but he admitted that he could see the point.
Even though the act of putting on the cursed crown was one of his own free will, 'his' actions after that horrified him. He promised that since he'd worked for Xornoth and been disillusioned twice, he'd never do anything like that ever again. Shrub was the only one who at least thought he would try to.
The corruption wasn't spreading anymore now that Xornoth was no longer a demon, but it mostly still remained where it had grown. The Fae were helping with the cleanup, assisting fWhip, or rather he assisted them, in brewing more of the blue elixir to splash around everywhere.
Where the puddles of anti-corruption landed, the red corruption receded and wouldn't show itself again. The potions were handed around to all the emperors and they spent most of their time trying to fix their lands, and when Sheriff Jimmy complained about it, the Fae made their plants retreat from Tumble Town, and the place was free of any kind of corruption.
What had happened to Sausage of Sanctuary had affected many more emperors now. Shelby had constant headaches and felt dizzy all the time, and Joel was in Sausage's state now. Katherine, Pix, and fWhip were getting very close to it as well, and the other emperors who hadn't been affected yet were also complaining of migraines.
This prompted the magic users to work harder on the counter-spell to get all the time-displaced emperors back to a thousand years ago. The emperors who were getting frozen in time were moved to the same room Sausage of Sanctuary was still standing in, so that if anything bad happened while they were completely frozen, all of them could be protected together. Then one day, as Shelby came into the Castle of Memories to check on the frozen emperors, she was greeted by an unusual sight. "Guys?!"
The witch called all the emperors to the room, and they all saw what she saw. Bubbles. A lot of her, all with different colored collars. "Sausage, I thought you had only one dog!" They were all looking intently at Sausage, and around him, according to Scott of Chromia, were bursts of magic auras.
The Bubbles were evidently doing something. Finally, after a few minutes, Sausage twitched. And moved again. "Sausage!" God Joel yelped, and everyone realized that he was able to move too. In fact, all the frozen emperors were back to normal, and Shelby found her head free of migraines.
The frozen emperors then wanted to learn what in the world happened while they were 'asleep', and Sausage seemed pretty unconcerned by the fact that Xornoth was uncorrupted and just casually around.
The Bubbles with a black collar began to bark, and Sausage translated. "She says that she's sorry for not being able to help sooner, she and the other Bubbles were busy fixing other multiversal crises that was caused by Gem's spell. But they're stabilized now, and now all the Bubbles in the multiverse can help us get you guys home!"
A bunch of emperors cheered, but not everyone was happy. Most of them were sad that they'd have to say goodbye to their new friends forever, and Lord Sausage was just looking at Pearl so miserably. Shrub also looked downcast, petting her wolves. "Guess we're going to get our memories wiped now," She sighed.
Sausage of Sanctuary suddenly sobered and glanced at Bubbles. The black-collared Bubbles glanced at the other Bubbles, and found out that the rest of them were looking at her. She made a noise that sounded an awful lot like sighing, and woofed her approval. Shrub cheered, and everyone looked at her.
"What? Did I never mention I can understand dogs too? They're not that different from wolves." Sausage of Sanctuary rushed to the past Sausage and whispered in his ear, although he was so excited that a lot of people could hear what he said.
"Bubbles is letting me let you guys go home without wiping your memories! And she says I can go with you to help fix what happened in the Rapture! And she's going to make it that nothing bad happens to the universe! She'll just have to make a fork in the timestream and make a parallel timeline, but that's not important."
Now everyone was happy, except those who had no idea what was going on. "What's the Rapture?" Sheriff Jimmy asked, and then when he heard that it was the end of the world a thousand years ago, he insisted on coming along, because he wanted to help his friends from the past.
And then that started a chain reaction of almost all the future emperors wanting to go to the past and help their past selves, despite how Bubbles tried to explain that the more people who went to the past the more damaged the timestream could be and the less she was sure she could keep the multiverse safe. Just then Xornoth walked in and everyone stopped talking.
The now uncorrupted demon had been told things along the lines of a magical accident that pulled him and Scott to another world, and although everyone tried to keep the details vague, Scott said that he was eventually going to tell him the truth.
They were planning to bring Xornoth back to Rivendell with the other past emperors and when that happened, nothing could be explained away anymore. And he wasn't told yet why there were two sets of almost every emperor who looked alike and had the same name either.
Scott was dropping him little hints that there was something else going on, and Xornoth figured that he'd be told eventually, and was actually not asking that many questions, much to the relief of most people who didn't know how to explain that he used to be a demonic spirit that had been corrupting and possessing them. So he'd taken to being toured around the empires and meeting people and generally just being nice and helping out wherever he could.
Xornoth stopped in the doorway when he saw everyone was inside and that the room was pretty crowded. "What's going on in here?" "Uh, Xornoth? Remember when you asked why there were some emperors who looked and had the same name as other emperors?" Scott asked carefully.
"Yeah, I remember. And I also remember being almost at the end of my patience waiting for why I ask stuff and you act very shady afterward."
"Well, the thing is, half of us are from a thousand years ago, including you, and someone accidentally cast a spell that sent us into the future and now we've met our reincarnations."
Xornoth blinked. "Oh. Well, that would explain a lot. What spell was used?" Wizard Gem hesitated, then passed the elf her grimoire with all her notes. Xornoth studied it, then glanced at the dates written in the upper right corner in disbelief. "It took you two weeks to figure this out? This is easy. The spell is just animas unde venerunt." And then all of them were gone.
So it turned out that Xornoth knew ancient spells like this, because Conal, who lived a long, long time ago, knew that, and Xornoth had most of Conal's memories, although he seemed to think that they were his memories and that Alinar was Scott. When asked about it, Scott protested that he didn't know everything that the Rune Blade did to Xornoth, and that there was no point in blaming him.
Shelby stumbled as she landed near an open campfire. It was nearly put out, and around it were ten chairs. She looked around and saw that all the emperors were there, past and future, and Xornoth as well. And the Bubbles, who were all shaking their heads, were also there. "Oh," Xornoth said.
"I forgot to factor in that the reincarnations are in close proximity to the targets and to leave them out of the spell." "Well, now we don't have to keep arguing over who comes here to help, because now we're all here!" Sausage declared, finding the silver lining. "I hope you can still keep the multiverse from shattering, Bubbles, but don't worry, I have complete faith in all of you!"
Bubbles just sighed.